


The Amestrian Candidate

by Dyanne_Hellen_Sotobod



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Intrigue, Political Campaigns, Political Drama, Post-Canon, updates every other weekend, will add more characters/relationships as they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2020-08-14 02:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 128,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dyanne_Hellen_Sotobod/pseuds/Dyanne_Hellen_Sotobod
Summary: General Roy Mustang—charming, intelligent, heroic—is predicted to be the next Fuhrer of Amestris.  But a series of acts of terrorism drive the General into a ruthless race against a magnetic opponent.  Mustang and his team scramble to salvage a campaign in the face of rising nationalism, scandal, and international tension.  If they succeed, they can save an infant democracy from collapse.  Mustang must consider what and whom he is willing to sacrifice, and he must ask himself the most difficult question of his life: can one be a good politician and a good man?





	1. Chapter 1

#### Amestris, 1923

His platform had two key points: globalization and reconstruction. They were popular ideas in a changing East Region and were gaining traction across the country, and he was uniquely qualified to discuss both. After he had won the election—and he would win—he would be the youngest Führer in history and the first to be elected into office, unlike his predecessor, who had been appointed by an emergency maritime council and then, during his fifth year in office, had inadvertently laid the groundwork for a federal election.

Of course, there were plenty of citizens who took issue with Mustang. They disagreed with his efforts to rebuild Ishval, his campaigning for demilitarization on the Aerugan border, his push for more open trade networks. Hawkeye would tell him he could not sway those minds. His new campaign team would agree. Besides, he had no use for garnering the support of nationalists.

His manager would take it further. “It’s not about getting everyone to agree with you,” Charlie would say. “It’s about getting all the people who already agree with you to show up and vote. You’re never going to change a mind, you’re just going to excite the ones already made up.”

Others remembered his past involvement in Ishval, and they resented him. They were right to do so. Most of those were people whose families he had slaughtered. Many Ishvalan people were willing to work with him, take his sincerity for what it was and turn it into a rebuilt homeland. A large portion of the population, though, saw him walk streets paved over mass graves of charred bodies, and they hated. Hawkeye never said much about that. She did not need to.

Yet his campaign advisors were hopeful. On a hot day in late summer, they sat around the polished oak table in his new dining room and relayed him numbers and reports from focus groups and proposed strategies for each region.

Hawkeye had made him move once he had started gathering resources for the campaign. “Führer’s don’t live in studio apartments,” she had insisted. “And they certainly own more than a sofa and a wardrobe.” So he had let her scour the city for him, and then he had fought her, wondering why any East City townhouse would need two fireplaces and a radiator in each room. She had won. Then he had let her furnish the place, and he had feigned disinterest while they had selected bedsheets and compared china and tested mattresses, and he had insisted that if Führers lived in damn big townhouses with two fireplaces and a radiator in each room, then they definitely slept in damn big beds. Hawkeye had conceded.

He smiled at the dark knot in the wood grain just left of his thumb. He had not told her that he liked everything she had picked. Likewise, she had not told him that she knew why he insisted on a mattress big enough for two adults and a few small children that might crawl in during the night, or why he had left so many empty spaces between framed photographs of friends in and out of uniform and of Elysia Hughes at her ballet recitals. Perhaps, if a tribunal did not see fit to convict them for their many war crimes, they could use the house as a vacation home away from Central, and their children would crawl between them in the night, and they would attend recitals together and put their own photographs in the empty spaces.

If a tribunal did see fit, he could always will everything to the Elrics.

One of his advisors, a solid, brown-haired wall of a man named Brandt, cleared his throat. “So that’s that,” he said, smacking a stack of papers in front of him on the table, and Mustang’s mind returned to the meeting and the dining room and the men seated there.

He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. His lunch hour was almost over, and while Hawkeye would not reprimand him for being tardy after one of these meetings, there was a revised draft of a trade agreement on his desk. His adjutant had told him she would not let him leave that day until he had read it and filed feedback.

He pushed himself up. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll be heading back.”

Another advisor, Kuhn, coughed. “It’s…” He darted his eyes down when Mustang looked at him. The man was small, pale, and always seemed ready to jump out of his skin. Sometimes Mustang wondered how the Eastern summer rainstorms didn’t blow or wash him away. “It’s not all, General.”

Mustang sat back down and leaned forward on his elbows and folded his hands against his chin. His stomach twisted. He had time to turn around whatever bad news they were about to deliver, but based on how only Brandt and Neumann and Charlie Gruber looked him in the eye while the other two men in his cabinet found the ceiling and the floor of sudden interest, it was very bad news indeed.

Charlie held up a hand. “Your key message is strong, Sir. And you have the experience and the ties to back it up.” Mustang had known Charlie Gruber in Ishval, and they had stood together on the Promised Day. Charlie, with experience in elections under hopeful parliament members and the nerve to deliver an honest answer, had been an obvious choice for his campaign manager. “Based on our research, public opinion leans in your favour.”

The fifth member of the team, a half-Ishvalan man named Roth, whom Mustang had met while planning a federal water treatment plant, leaned across the table. “But we’re about to start polling in a few weeks, and…” He bit his lip and rubbed at one red eye.

Neumann ran a hand through his hair. “Frankly, Sir, we’re concerned.”

“Why?” Mustang asked. Charlie held out a hand to the other men, as if offering them the honour of speaking first. When no one did, Mustang repeated, “Why?”

Kuhn coughed again. “The initial polls are hugely important, Sir. It will tell us what those paying attention want, and it tells those who don’t pay attention what they should want.”

Mustang waved a hand in a circle. “Yes, we’ve been through this.” A long document and a very stern adjutant were waiting for him.

Brandt’s gruff voice broke the silence. “The fact is,” he said, “most people will not vote for you based on policy. Most people don’t care or understand enough to think that way.” He and Charlie nodded at each other. “We’ve seen it with parliament members and with Führer Grumman’s tenure. When we polled his approval rating and asked supporters what they liked about him, eighty-seven percent said—eighty-seven, Sir,” he punctuated his words by jabbing two fingers into the table, “—that he seemed like someone you could grab a drink with.”

“Or something similar,” Charlie added.

Mustang leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I get drinks all the time. With plenty of people.” In fact, he and Grumman were known to get drinks at the same Central establishment, one owned by a Madam Christmas.

Charlie shook his head. “It’s about being likeable.”

Mustang scoffed at the absurdity, at the implication that he needed to learn to be likeable. He had women falling at his feet. He had friends, a select few of whom were sitting with him at that moment. “What does that even mean? You like me.”

Neumann leaned forward and smiled in his gentle way. “Of course, Sir. But we know you.”

“You spent years building a reputation and making yourself seem nonthreatening and shallow.” Charlie rapped his knuckles on the wood table. “Unfortunately, you did a very good job.”

Brandt crossed his arms. “In our focus groups, we talked to people who said they’d vote against you. Do you know what the general opinion was?”

Mustang noted the grim set to Charlie’s mouth. Were people remembering his genocidal involvement in Ishval two decades before? Were they calling him hypocritical? Was it something far worse? His stomach turned and his heart pounded louder in his chest, but he swallowed and tried to break the tension. “I get too many drinks?”

Brandt’s gaze hardened. “Out of two hundred people, one hundred forty-two—that’s seventy-one percent—said that you don’t seem like a ‘family man.’”

The words pressed against his ears. His campaign team looked at him, waiting for him to say something. He opened his mouth, and a bark of laughter came out, then another, as he struggled to speak. “What?”

Roth swallowed. “It’s sort of a matter of your parentage. Or, rather, your not having one.”

“You’re very tight-lipped about your history,” Neumann said. “People don’t even know where you grew up. You appeared in the military ostensibly out of thin air.”

Mustang brushed a hand over his mouth to massage the sudden stiffness in his jaw and wiped away sweat that was not only the result of the heat. His foster mother and sisters were one subject he would not speak about, approval ratings be damned. They were no one’s business, and their security would be compromised if their contributions to his life and to the country’s longevity were public knowledge.

Charlie cleared his throat and looked around at the other men. “We’re not asking you to share with the public, though,” he said, because he knew a little. One of Mustang’s sisters had contacted Charlie before the Promised Day. “Your private life should remain…well, private.” When Mustang relaxed he added, “But, Sir, there is an image issue. And the fact that you don’t appear to have a private life or a family makes you seems impersonal.”

Mustang scoffed. No private life? He had spent years creating a visible private life. “I’m not impersonal. I go out with plenty of—”

“That’s actually—” Khun began before clamping his mouth shut as if he could not believe he had just interrupted the awesome Flame Alchemist, who could level villages with a snap of his fingers. When no one else spoke, he said, “That’s sort of what we’re getting at.”

“Most of those who talked about this are married,” said Brandt. “And, as you know, married couples make up a majority of the voter base. And even among your supporters in focus groups, over sixty percent said it was an area that could use improvement.”

Roth waved his hand. “Obviously, you can’t change your past.”

Mustang nodded. It was that same understanding that had made Roth one of the first Ishvalans to align with him when he had first begun his reconstruction efforts. One of the first to offer him trust and understanding, if not forgiveness.

“But perhaps,” Neumann said, taking time with each word, “if you had a nuclear family of your own, we’d see a shift in opinion.”

The whole room slowed and rotated on that sentence. The men started talking to him all at once, and above the voices he could hear Charlie say, “No platform changes. The same Roy Mustang, just newly packaged for family consumption.”

Mustang raised both hands. “Hold on,” he said, and the noise quieted. “Are you telling me to get married?” Over Brandt’s head, an old academy photograph of himself with Maes Hughes stared at him. Hughes had one arm over Mustang’s shoulder and smiled wide at the camera. Mustang’s own smile was smaller, his posture more straight. A boy trying to be a man and believing that people were better than they were. “Get married!” he could hear the photographed Maes shouting. Laughter ballooned in his chest but did not rise, blocked by a hard lump in his throat. It would never end, would it? He looked back at his advisors and let his hands drop. “This is unbelievable.”

Kuhn flinched and looked down. Charlie looked at Brandt and raised his eyebrows as if he had just won some unfortunate bet.

Mustang ground his teeth. Married. A nuclear family. “You know, I basically raised two children.”

Brandt snorted and shook his head. “The Elrics don’t count, Sir. One was your employee and the other was a suit of armour. And they were practically grown by the time you found them.”

Without looking up, Kuhn said, “Sir, the country loves a first family. It gives them a sort of moral compass with a touch of relatability and humanity.”

Mustang gave a jerky nod. Memories of Bradley and Selim flooded his mind. “Because our last first family was so morally upright and human.” While the majority of the population knew a different story, these privileged few at least knew the true causes and results of the coup from so long ago.

“It doesn’t matter what is,” Charlie said, his favourite lesson serving to annoy further, “only what they see.”

Neumann nodded. “Führer Grummann had it easy, being a widower. His seeming devotion to his late wife gave him a…romantic credibility.”

“But you, Sir, are different,” Charlie said, and Mustang braced himself for the honesty that only an old friend could supply. “You’ve never been seen in a long-term, monogamous relationship. And it makes you look—permission to speak freely, Sir—Callow,” he said.

Mustang rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the tightness that gripped him there. His shirt was glued to his back, and it settled uncomfortably on his sweaty skin. Charlie was right, annoyingly so, but Mustang would not concede. Not yet. “There are worse things.”

“Not when you’re looking at an election. The democracy is still in its infancy, and the people want stability, maturity…” Charlie took a deep breath and seemed to find the word he wanted. “Trustworthiness.”

“And many people find that in a marriage,” Brandt added.

Neumann held out his hands. “All we ask is that you think about it. Everyone enjoys a love-story, and even a rumoured engagement could boost your popularity.”

He took a deep breath through his nose as he pondered how vexing a rumoured engagement to anyone but one woman would be to him. Still, maybe they knew what they were talking about in terms of polling. “I will,” he said. Then, because Kuhn looked a little too relaxed for Mustang’s current temper, he snapped, “Think about it. I’ll think about it.”

Brandt declared the meeting adjourned, and he left while the rest of the men stood and gathered their documents into leather cases. Roth patted Khun on the back and steered him toward the door while teasing that he had almost held it together that time. Neumann gave a cheerful wave as he walked out of the narrow house.

Mustang wiped sweat from his brow and tugged at the collar sticking to his neck. It was a hot day, so hot that he thought he should tell Hawkeye again that she may have won the battle over the radiators, but he had been right about their being superfluous.

Charlie leaned back in his chair and the wood creaked. “For the record, I was not the one who came up with the marriage plan.”

Mustang snorted. “You call that a plan?”

“It’s an image issue. You need a palatable one, and you need it soon. Before we roll out the first advertisements.”

“It’s 1923,” Mustang said. “People have the right to not get married.”

Charlie smiled. “You’re a good governor. You’re a good soldier. But you’re going to learn that governing and campaigning are not the same thing.”

Mustang drummed his fingers on the table and hummed. As far as he could see, governing and campaigning were not so different. Everything came down to strategizing, knowing the opponent, and knowing what to risk to take them down. “You said there was no point in getting parliamentary endorsements. You said Kaufman has the majority of parliament on his side.” 

Charlie nodded. “He’s the leader of the plurality, and he will take others with him.” The Parliament Member had announced his candidacy one week earlier, and Charlie had made no secret of his thought that Kaufman would be Mustang’s strongest competitor.

“Why don’t we try to undercut that support? You also said that one of the minority parties aligns with my policies. Why can’t we get them?”

Charlie tapped his fingers against his lips. “What do you know about the Sitko-Novak Act?”

Mustang frowned. “Is this a quiz?”

Charlie smiled. “Only a little bit.”

Mustang sighed and rattled off the school-boy definition. “It’s an act that allows private companies to establish and run transportation on government roads and railways.”

“And?” Charlie prompted.

Mustang looked up at the ceiling. Was Charlie trying to make a point about his knowledge of economics? “And it allows those companies to impose prices on transportation at their discretion.”

“And?”

Mustang looked back at Charlie. “What do you mean? That’s it.”

Charlie held up a finger. “Good, but not quite. There’s a provision tucking into Sitko-Novak that allows the federal government to come in and set a ceiling on prices if the transportation is not accessible to enough people.” He folded his hands on the table. “You don’t know about it because you can’t know every detail about every act that was ever passed. That’s why you’d have a cabinet of ministers, people who would know things for you and make you look good.” He grabbed the cold coffee press in the middle of the table and refilled his mug. “By the way, you should start coming up with your list of potentials.”

“What does any of this have to do with the election?”

Charlie took a sip. “There’s another reason you don’t know about that clause. There have been strikes and protests about prices over the years, but the government has never acted on it. Why do you think that is?”

Mustang did not have to think hard. He had seen for himself the efforts of the government to sacrifice citizen lives for selfish gain. Why would transportation costs be on the docket when the powers that governed them were busy plotting the destruction of a nation? Perhaps in some places, those same strikes and protests had been inflamed to add fuel to the planned conflict. Years had passed and the amount he still did not know disconcerted him. “The government didn’t care.”

“Exactly,” Charlie said. “That’s why we can’t get Parliament endorsements. For years these men lobbied and worked in the hope that their government would recognize the people’s voice. For centuries, they held no power, but they kept trying.” He tapped his fingers on the side of his mug. “Now, they have a chance to accomplish real change, through an electoral system they have always believed in. And you?” He pointed at Mustang. “You represent a backslide.”

Mustang opened his mouth and Charlie raised a hand. “I know,” he continued. “Your long-term plans are more radical and progressive than most of theirs are, but you’re still old guard. You’re a contradiction, and they’re not going to trust you.” He set his mug on the table, leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Remember how you’ve spun the story. Roy Mustang didn’t stage a coup to tear down the old government. He staged a coup to save it.”

Mustang clenched his teeth. How could he have predicted that the most politically safe and sensible action almost a decade before would hurt him later? “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do.” Charlie picked up his mug again. “While I’ve got you here…”

Mustang snorted. “In my own house?”

Charlie grinned. “Yes, well…” He took a drink of coffee. “This is very good. Where do you buy it?”

Mustang shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Bauer.”

Charlie nodded. “How is it? Having a housekeeper.”

He frowned. Mrs. Bauer, with her tight bun and perpetual frown and constant insistence that he needed to eat more, was not an unwelcome addition to his life. “It’s fine, I suppose.” It was nice coming home from work and being able to sit and work on campaign messaging without worrying about laundry or darning socks. Of course, he was a bachelor in 1923, and he had stitched the transmutation circles on his gloves before those circles had become redundant. He could darn his own socks. He threw his hands up. “I told Hawkeye that I’ve cooked and cleaned for myself for the past twenty years, and I didn’t need help. She said that running a campaign would be like having a second full-time job and that I’d need the extra help if I wanted to sleep.” Hawkeye had been more specific, insisting that he not only sleep but that he also do it outside of work hours and in his own home rather than in a closet or at his desk.

Charlie smiled. “She’s not wrong.”

Mustang scowled. “Don’t take her side.” He also found himself taking Hawkeye’s side more often than not. The woman had an uncanny ability to always be practical and logical. Most days he appreciated her advice, even if he did not appreciate being wrong.

When Charlie’s face fell, Mustang asked, “What is it?”

Charlie pressed his lips together. “Consider distancing yourself from Grumman.”

Mustang opened his mouth to protest, but Charlie continued. “I know, and it’s a difficult situation. On one hand, his approval ratings are high. At the same time, we can’t have people think you’ve been groomed for the role. Which, incidentally, you have been.”

Politics had been easier when seizing power had meant executing a hostile takeover or being a well-liked and decorated general. Of course, Mustang had been fighting to dismantle the stratocracy and establish a democracy for years. He was not going to stop when democracy began happening without him.

“He gave parliament certain powers, and they’ve used them to establish a national election,” Charlie said, following Mustang’s thoughts. “I doubt anyone anticipated that, especially him, but…” He shrugged. “What’s done is done. If he tries to walk it back and put you in charge, he’s a despot. And even if he lets things stand but you two are seen as too close, it looks like you’re trying to fix the vote.”

Mustang frowned. “I’m not trying to fix the vote.” He was in favour of the vote. Did it make his ascent to power more difficult? Certainly. At the same time, the vote for Führer was a sign that Amestris was changing. There were still problems at regional and local levels of government, the military still had too much involvement in civilian and judicial affairs, and there were still former officials who were evading trial. When he was chosen by the people, he would address everything, but he needed a fair and just victory. Anything less would be in violation of everything he wanted for the future.

Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to buy a jar, and I’m going to make you put fifty cenz in it every time I have to remind you that appearances matter much more than the truth does right now. That jar alone could probably fund our radio spots.” He drained the last of his coffee. “This is going to be a bloody, risky election. And…Roy.”

Mustang looked at Charlie, and he could still see traces of the young man who had laughed in Ishval when he had found out his commanding officer had not even known his name.

“As a friend,” he continued, his voice softer and warmer than it had been, “I just want to say…” He shifted his weight in his chair. “I know you’ve been planning this for a long time. But over the next sixteen months, your whole life, everything you do or have done will be fair game for the press. They will drag you and others around you into the spotlight. They will be looking for any scandal, and if they find one, they will rip you to pieces. Are you ready for that?”

Mustang smiled. “I’ve been working for this for fifteen years.”

“We need to be able to prepare for any eventuality.” Charlie folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Is there anything you haven’t told me? Anything your opponents might use against you?”

He thought of his foster mother and her girls, his sisters, and the information they bought between the sheets and sold over cocktails. He thought of boxes full of documents and notes on elite personnel. He thought of codenames and covert operations and secret kills. He thought of symbols and coded lines and burn scars on Hawkeye’s back, he thought of a grandfather that only he and Hawkeye knew about, and he thought of Hawkeye herself, pushing him and waiting for him to forge the path to their mutual absolution. He thought of how she had felt in his arms eight years before, of how her hair had smelled, of how her blood had looked on his hands. He thought of a personal barrier, one that had protected them from fraternization investigations, that they had both let fall within minutes. He thought of her hand on his chest when he had not been able to see, of her gentle voice in his ear, of how he would move heaven and earth to be half the man she thought he was. He thought of her, the only constant in his life, and he said, “No. Nothing at all.”

The walk back to Eastern Headquarters felt longer than usual, and the office was quiet. He sat at his desk and picked up his pen, but every time he looked at the draft in front of him, the words ran together and he had to look up and pinch the bridge of his nose. His eyes had been growing sore after prolonged reading, and the pinching took some of the edge off. After complaining of it once to Hawkeye and assuring her that it was not another procrastination attempt, she had sent him to an optometrist. The glasses, unused and sitting in his desk drawer, and the grey hairs that had been appearing with increasing frequency and the slight tremor in his fingers following his injuries on the Promised Day were clock hands. Of course, when he had said as much to Hawkeye, she had sighed. “You’re nearing forty, Sir, not senility.”

The air in his private office was dense and wet, and the ceiling fans did little to combat the heat. For a moment he battled with the window, but the wood frame had swollen shut in the humidity. Mustang brushed at the hair plastered to his forehead and decided to move his work for the day into the main office with the rest of his officers. There was better air circulation outside, and those windows had been open.

He took up residence at one empty desk far from the door. His men gave a quiet acknowledgement of his presence before returning to their tasks and filling the room with the sounds of flipping pages, dinging typewriter carriages, and groaning chairs. Of course, she sat right in his line of sight, her desk pressed against Captain Havoc’s, and she dragged the end of her pen along lines of text and mouthed sentences to herself while she circled and underlined passages that Mustang would need to rework.

After an hour of pretending to read and staring at her instead, Mustang dropped his charade and his pen, and he sighed.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, Sir?” Major Hawkeye asked without looking at him, because she never needed to look at him. “Or are you going to glare at me all day?”

Havoc’s mouth curled into a smile, and he stopped filling out forms to lean back in his chair and look between the two of them.

Mustang frowned and picked up the draft of the trade agreement and held it up in front of his face. He would not give the Captain the satisfaction of a show. “The second one, probably.” Perhaps if he continued to pretend, Hawkeye would drop the issue and Havoc would stop grinning. Perhaps the fuzzy words might make sense and the pain behind his eyes would dissipate.

The office door burst open and Mustang knew his headache would be staying. 

Edward Elric clumped across the floor, his gait even but one leg still hitting the wood louder than the other did. He dropped into a wooden chair in front of Mustang’s desk. He pushed his fringe back, let it fall into his face again, and flashed his stupid smile before saying, “General.”

“Why are you here?” Mustang asked, because he had suffered enough for one day without adding Edward’s inevitable storm to his tribulations.

Edward waved a hand and pulled a stack of white papers from his brown case. “I have some hypotheses you might like.”

Mustang took the papers, because they would be far more interesting than anything else on his desk. He might even pull out his glasses.

No, Edward would poke fun at his age until he really was bent over a cane if he did that. “Did you test them?” Mustang asked as he flipped through the first few pages, already recognizing a few phrases Edward had been obsessing over the past few months. 

He could feel Edward staring at him and met the sardonic glare.

“Well, golly, General!” Edward said, his voice high and nasal. “I didn’t even think to do that myself!”

Mustang pressed his lips together and returned the glare before looking at the paper. Edward’s loss of alchemy was not something either of them ever forgot, and the previous years had seen Edward’s interests shift from the applied to the theoretical and into a field Edward had named “Physical Alchemy,” an area of science where alchemy blurred so heavily with physics that separation was impossible. “I meant did you have Alphonse or someone take a look.”

Edward waved a hand. “Al’s still in Xing and Izumi is…somewhere traveling, I don’t know.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I’m out of options.”

Edward’s hypotheses were not testable by means Mustang could imagine. They were complex and far outside his own expertise, but fascinating. “Glad to know you think so highly of me.” The very idea of gravitational interactions at a sub-atomic level…He looked up. “You took a six-hour train to give me this. Were you so excited to show me this you woke up before the sun?”

Edward sputtered some vague, indignant response and Mustang grinned. As much as he appreciated that Edward had given up his ability to perform alchemy but not to theorize its applications, and as much as he enjoyed being part of his once-protégé’s musings, he still relished in making him squirm.

But the conversation from his lunch hour played over in his head, and even Edward’s proposed “gravitons” and satisfying, annoyed expression could not keep Mustang from glancing at Hawkeye. After a few minutes of silence, Hawkeye coughed, a light sound that told him he was going to tell her what was wrong.

“Nonversations,” Havoc had dubbed those particular interactions.

So, over the scratching of pens and the click of typewriters and the ticking from Fuery’s radio and the shifting of Edward’s linen pants against poorly-varnished wood, Mustang surrendered. “The campaign advisors have suggested I get married.”

He had paraphrased, but it was enough to silence the room. Mustang dropped Edward’s papers on his desk. An interrogation was coming, and he could not be distracted. Edward leaned forward. Havoc’s toothpick dangled from his open grin, as if the announcement were better than any he could have hoped for. Fuery pulled his headphones down around his neck. Falman, on loan from Briggs after the most recent joint training maneuvers, straightened. Breda put down his own files of intel. Hawkeye let the end of her pen rest against her lips. Mustang waited for someone, anyone, to respond, to start the line of questioning.

Breda made the first move. “Did they have a woman in mind?”

Mustang shook his head. He supposed he was fortunate in that respect. “They said having the appearance of a family would boost my polling numbers and virtue or something.”

Havoc cackled.

Falman nodded. “That makes sense. Most people vote for those they can relate to. They do for the Parliament, at least.”

“It could do something for your popularity among men,” Havoc said without bitterness. He was married to a nurse he had met during his physical therapy, and the friendly rivalry over dates was a thing of the past. “And in general,” he added.

Mustang shrugged. “Then I suppose I’ll just be an unpopular Führer.”

Havoc took his toothpick and pointed it at Mustang. “Or an unelected one.”

Hawkeye had turned her attention back to her work, the entire conversation one she would rather have later. There was something about her demeanor, though, the fist under her chin and the slight frown on her face, that made him ask, only half-joking, “Would you do me the honour, Hawkeye?”

“No, Sir,” she said, and he grinned. She was quick. He almost forgot to feel disappointed.

Havoc sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Oh, Major!”

“Campaign over, I guess,” Edward said at the same time. “Turned down by the only woman who can put up with you.”

Fuery sat up straighter in his chair and said, “What about Führer Grumman’s granddaughter? I thought he was always trying to get you to…” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Hawkeye choked on her coffee and coughed hard, and Mustang leaned his hands on his desk. “Would you believe I already tried that avenue?”

Havoc barked a laugh. “Oof.” 

Hawkeye coughed into a handkerchief and tapped the edge of Havoc’s desk with her pen. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“Besides,” Havoc amended, “That might make people think of a dynasty. And that’s the last thing we want right now.”

“Just a family, right?” Breda asked, and when Mustang nodded, he said, “Then maybe it’s time to come clean, about the bar and the girls.”

Mustang raised an eyebrow. “You mean my personally-funded spy ring run by my madam foster mother and her ladies of the night?”

Havoc crossed his arms and nodded. “Very family-friendly.”

“Sorry, Fullmetal,” Mustang said with his perfected cheery grin, the one that never failed to annoy Edward, “for all the adult content.”

Edward rolled his eyes. “I’ve been married for five years and I have one-and-a-half kids.” 

“When is Winry due?” Hawkeye asked, looking up and offering a rare smile.

Edward turned in his chair again and said, “Ten weeks! She’s so sure this one’s a girl–”

“I’ve slowed that down, anyway,” Mustang said, and Edward scowled at him. He was not going to let Edward dominate the conversation with boasting about his wife and children, even if the talk did make him fondly remember Hughes. “I’ve been seeing the girls at a much more…” Two or three dates each month was normal and respectable for a bachelor, right? “Seemly pace.”

Breda shook his head. “Reputations outlive the truth, Sir.”

“Why are we debating this?” Fuery asked. He brought his legs up to squat in his chair and moved one headphone speaker over his ear. “The election isn’t for another year.”

“That’s sixteen months to successfully fabricate and sell perfect domestic bliss,” Breda said.

“That’s not a lot of time,” Falman said with a nod.

The men began debating again, how to get their general a bride, which bride to get. Edward suggested they send for a mail-order bride in Aerugo, a woman who had never met him would be unlikely to turn him down. Mustang said that he never had issues with women turning him down. Havoc said that Hawkeye had done just that, and Edward said that it was because she was the smartest person in the room.

Mustang watched her, waiting for her to say something, anything, to in some way denounce the idea that he had to marry, and to marry someone who was not herself. But Hawkeye was still, her pen hovered over her paperwork and her brown eyes staring at the crack between her and Havoc’s desks.

The argument continued. A marriage to someone from Amestris would look more patriotic. Perhaps he could simply adopt a baby. Havoc would not trust the general to take care of a dog, much less an infant. Reading to orphans would make him look charitable, but it would not solve the issue of the lacking nuclear family. It was only when Breda said that there had to be dozens of women who could be paid under the table to pretend an engagement that Mustang finally said, “Alright. I’m finished with this.” He scooped up his paperwork because leaving the oppressive heat of his private office had been a mistake. “Hawkeye, my office. And bring those Mauer files. I want to review them.”

Hawkeye only hesitated for a second before saying, “Yes, Sir,” and grabbing several yellow folders. She ran after him, and he closed the door behind them.

She waited while he went back to the window, struggled with it again, and gave up. He undid another button on his shirt and pushed his rolled sleeves higher up his arms.

“Well, Sir?”

He fell into his chair and looked at her, still in her jacket and standing straight in defiance of the late summer heat. She was the most stubborn woman he had ever met. “Well.”

She took a step toward him. “How are you feeling?”

He pushed his hair back. “Who says I’m feeling anything other than productive?”

She smiled at him, a small smile that somehow reached her eyes. “Sir, I submitted the Mauer dossier yesterday. You signed off on it.”

“Ah.” He had wanted to speak with his oldest and closest friend. He had wanted to speak with her. He could only hope the rest of the office had not noticed the inconsistency in his excuse.

She placed her folders on a corner of his desk and leaned in. “How are you feeling?”

He groaned and stood up again. “About what? Are you talking about the campaign? Or the hill my campaign team chose to die on?” He looked out the window. If she had been at the meeting, would he have felt so annoyed? She would have said something to support his side. He gazed at the bright green trees and wished, not for the first time, that Hawkeye’s position as his employee did not legally bar her from working on the campaign. He wished many things about their relationship were different, but they had made their choices. “Or are you talking about your very callous rejection of my suit? Because to tell you the truth, I’m still reeling from that.”

“You know Hughes would be howling right now.”

He turned to look at her, glad they had entertained the same thought. Somewhere, his friend’s soul was singing the same song he had sung in life. “Find yourself a wife, Roy. Find yourself a wife.” When he saw her standing like that, though, with her hands cupping her elbows and her hip leaning against the edge of his desk and her head tilted to the side and that smile on her lips, he did not want to find himself a wife. How could he? “How?” he whispered as he moved to her. “How do you always know exactly what I’m thinking?”

“How are you still surprised?” she whispered back.

They were close enough that he could see the individual hues in her brown eyes, and he thought that maybe the new heat was not so terrible. She had been growing her hair out again, and it fell just above her shoulders. It looked nice. “Tell me you think it’s a stupid idea.”

Her breath hitched and she glanced to the side, though she did not pull away from him. They had these moments, cracks in the wall that had crumbled during the Promised Day and had never been fully rebuilt.

He could see her considering, every facial tick giving credence to one argument or another. “You can’t,” he said. Then he stepped back, because any suspected fraternization would always be his fault. As the superior, he had to maintain the line, though he often failed. “Well, now you have to marry me.”

“Do I, Sir?”

He waved toward the office doors. “I hate to admit it, but Fullmetal is right. You’re the only person—male, female, or otherwise—who can put up with me.”

She nodded. “It’s a learned skill, Sir.”

“You’re funny.” He fell back into his chair and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Mail order it is.” He flipped open one of the folders, curious about what non-Mauer documents it held, and found plain typing paper. He smiled. Clever Major Hawkeye, grabbing something innocuous to supplant his thin cover story.

She walked around him and pushed on the window behind his desk.

“It’s stuck,” he said.

Major Riza Hawkeye, too stubborn to take him at his word, threw her shoulder against the window before running her hand up the frame. “It’s stuck,” she agreed. “I’ll call maintenance to get up here and pry it open. Sand it down. You can hardly breathe in here.”

He watched her think, one hand behind her back and the other pressed against her chin and lips. Grumman had told him once that he had recognized her immediately. She looked just like her mother had. Mustang was simply glad she had not taken after her father. “If the Führer can be a tragic romantic, I don’t see why I have a different measuring stick.”

She turned her head toward him. “The family thing?”

“Grumman,” he said, because the solution was so obvious.

She pressed her lips together. “You’re going to have to explain, Sir.”

“He’s a romantic because he never got over his late wife, right?” When she shrugged as if to say she supposed so, he continued, “Why can’t I be the same?”

She furrowed her brow and said, slowly, as if he had forgotten, “You don’t have a late wife, Sir.”

He snorted and waved a hand. “No, but I can be a romantic.” He tried to ignore how the crease between her brows deepened. “We don’t have to change my marital status. We change the narrative.” He pulled open a desk drawer and rifled through pages and journals. “Who’s that new gossip columnist for the Eastern Review?”

Hawkeye walked around to his side of the desk, pulled open a lower drawer, and pulled out a copy of the newspaper with that day’s date stamped across the top. She turned to page twelve and stepped back.

“Geneva Menke,” he read aloud. “Call her and see if we can schedule an interview.”

“No, Sir.”

He clicked his tongue and turned to chastise her before remembering—“Right.” Even if it were not an interview for the campaign, she would not want to run the risk of involving herself illegally. They had long since established that there were some things that drew too much attention. No matter how much they wanted something, if it had the potential to open their work to further investigation, it was not worth the risk. If that were the case, perhaps he should get his campaign team involved. “Call Neumann and have him do it,” he said, referring her to the scheduler.

A frown tugged at her mouth and she let out an exasperated sigh that told him his assessment had been incorrect. “With all due respect, Sir,” she began, and he knew she was about to speak her mind whether he liked it or not. “Putting the solution in the hands of a newspaper gossip columnist is not wise.”

He leaned forward on his desk. “I’m putting it in my hands.” Then, because she did not look happy, he added, “This will work.”

She pressed her lips together and looked up, searching for an argument. He knew, though, that there was no immediate threat to his person, that there was little bad press he could not surmount, that in the end she would follow.

He was right.

She nodded once, picked up the folders of typing paper, and walked out of his office. As the door crept closed, he heard her pick up her desk phone and spin the rotor. “Good afternoon, Mr. Neumann. This is Major Hawkeye at—I’m fine, Sir. How are you?”

Charlie would be happy. He had been telling Mustang to push his name and face into more papers before he officially announced his candidacy. With this, he could do all of that and get rid of the pesky “marriage” business.

He smiled. Governing and campaigning were not so different.


	2. Chapter 2

Through a thick cloud of steam she could see the bright red engine roll into the station, and over the scream of its brakes a station master called out the arrival of the limited express to Ishval. Years before, Resembool had been the final, dusty station on the line, but the General’s reconstruction efforts had made Resembool the next to last stop, just before the burgeoning region of Ishval where supplies and people could transfer to a desert line that ran all the way to Xing. At least, the desert line had run all the way to Xing. Trains had stopped moving of late.

“I heard the South has almost entirely converted to diesel,” Edward said next to her as he pushed his hair back from his face. It did little good, and strands of gold fell back into place and clung to his forehead. According to the radio, the heatwave was breaking, not that Riza could tell. 

“I’ve heard too.” Rebecca always kept Riza abreast of oil baron Leopold Minter’s latest business expansions, his more recent investments, and his plan to buy a third—a third!—holiday flat, this one on the Aerugan coast. “You have to let Leo and me take you to the beach, Riza,” Rebecca had said during her last telephone call. “The ocean is spectacular. You can’t imagine. You simply can’t.” Riza glanced at Edward as he watched passengers pour from the doors of the carriages. So many years had passed, and she was still surprised every time she had to look up to meet his eyes. “Have you heard about the underground train they’re building in Central?”

Edward snorted, a sound that recalled the boy he used to be. “Think about who I married, Riza. It’s all I hear about.” Then he grinned at her. “Progress.”

She smiled.

“You’ll come visit us when the baby is born, right?”

Somehow, even with all her careful watching, he had grown into a man. He had a family and a life and hope. All of the children had grown, unburdened by the same choices she had been forced to make. “Of course. Tell Winry ‘hello’ for me.”

Edward scratched the back of his head and looked away again, toward the eastern wall and the towering windows that cast a white grid across the concrete and brick platforms. “Yeah.” He puffed his cheeks. “She’s really excited, you know. We both are. We were planning to ask Al to be the godfather again, but…”

She waited before saying, “You don’t know when he’ll be back.”

He nodded. “Have you heard from him lately?”

“No.” Alphonse had last left for Xing seven months earlier, after his wedding to the Chang princess. Since then, she had spoken to him once. “Has he said anything?”

Edward cracked his knuckles, one at a time, before answering. “He hasn’t said anything. Nothing.” He looked at her. “No telephone calls. No telegrams.” He shrugged. “It’s not totally unusual. Neither one of us is great at communicating.”

She smiled and hummed. Edward had always had a bad habit of forgetting to check in during his travels, even when he had been on military payroll and reporting had been expected. She and the General had often learned of new Elric-caused disasters in newspapers. Alphonse, it seemed, had learned from his older brother.

“But it’s been a while,” Edward continued, “and we’re getting—Well, Winry is. I told her it’s probably just long distance prices and the whole…desert thing.”

She nodded. The General had been stressed about the campaign, but it was the developments in the unclaimed desert to the East that had been keeping him up at night. She remembered bringing him the newspaper the day the story had broken, the day the world woke up to discover that Drachma, Menimras, and Hinyanda had made a play for the region and had divided the land amongst the three countries. She remembered another day, not one month later, when they had both learned from Fuery’s radio that Xing had retaliated by claiming the land the railroad lay on as their sovereign territory. Then Menimras had sent an army of tanks and soldiers to block any trains from passing. “There’s going to be a war, Hawkeye,” the General had predicted. “And for once, we didn’t start it.”

The Amestrian ambassador to Xing had quit in fear, but Alphonse had been in the Imperial Palace and had been willing to take up certain liason duties until the Führer and his Minister of State could name an official replacement. It was meant to be a temporary fix.

“The Emperor hasn’t said anything to you?”

Edward shook his head. 

The train whistled and passengers flooded the platform. Travelers called farewells to their family and friends, men pushed past with cases and trunks on carts, and women bustled by with hat boxes and carpet bags.

“How long?” she asked. A few weeks passing without word could mean Alphonse had been busy or that he had not registered the length of time that had elapsed.

“Since the appointment.”

Cold pierced her chest. “Edward, that’s six months!”

A young child ran between them, and his mother chased after him and called for him to slow down and stay away from the tracks.

She stepped closer to Edward and took his arm. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“All aboard!” the conductor cried. “Next stop, Tostol!”

“We agreed that if something were wrong, Mustang would have told us.” Edward brushed his hair back, but it fell into his face again. “He appointed him—”

“He recommended him,” she corrected as she released him. “The General isn’t read in on all international affairs.”

He switched his case to his other hand and looked at the train and then back at her. “But someone would have said something, right?” He lowered his voice and leaned down. “If something were wrong, they’d tell us. And Ling would have let us know somehow. We would have heard from Mei, and…” He took a deep, shaky breath. “Even if communication has been more closed recently, Central would know. They’d tell his family, right?”

She nodded. “Notify next of kin. Yes.” Then she squeezed her eyes shut. She had not meant to recite part of the protocol for reporting a fallen soldier, had not meant the weight of it. Alphonse was sick. Telephone lines were not working. Mail was not arriving by train. Something else, something logical and possible, had to be the reason.

“Last call!” the conductor cried, and Riza opened her eyes again. “Last call for Ishval!”

Edward gave a jerky nod. “I have to go.” He swallowed and did not move. “It’s probably nothing, but Winry wanted me to ask if Mustang—”

The engine whistled, loud and long, and both of them winced.

“I know he has the contacts to do it, so can he just get a message to Al?” He looked at the train and it hissed, letting out a burst of steam. “Tell him to call us or Winry will probably kill him the next time she sees him.”

The train lurched forward and began to chug down the track.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said.

“Yeah,” Edward said. “Thanks.” Then he spun around, his golden ponytail whipping through the air, and he jogged toward the moving carriages. He looked back at her and called over his shoulder, “Bye, Riza!”

She raised a hand to wave and said, “Take care,” though not loud enough that he could hear.

He grabbed a bar on the side of one carriage and jumped onto a little step. He smiled and waved at her before pushing open the collapsing door with his shoulder and letting himself onto the train.The whole scene was nostalgic and made her want to laugh, but the memories of watching the boys run after trains in just that way felt wrong. Alphonse was fine. Of course he was fine. The General would know more, so she turned and walked away from the platforms, under the wrought iron clock at the station’s entrance entrance and toward the street spot where she had parked the General’s automobile.

If the General did not know, he would be able to find out. Then again, Edward knew his brother better than anyone else did. If he did not suppose it too worrisome, then she was overthinking. If Edward has been more concerned than he had presented, he would have brought it up to the General himself, instead of to her.

Edward was not very concerned. She had no need to be concerned either. She rationalized these things, repeated them in her mind as she unlocked the driver’s side door, yet something churned in her chest and stomach. Something like a slithering shadow, watching her from the darkness and laughing at her humanity and futile attempts to protect those she loved.

The interior of the General’s automobile was stifling, and she cranked down the driver’s side window and shrugged her jacket off her shoulders before turning the engine over.

She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief while she drove, as if she could wipe away the anxiety that beleaguered her mind. East City was teeming with lunchtime crowds, and the streets were packed with automobiles. It seemed everyone owned one, a consequence of booming rubber, oil, and steel industries, and made affordable by the hire purchase offered by most manufacturers. There was a surplus of food in the markets, and the people ate well. A healthy economy meant confidence in credit, confidence in the government, confidence in the people who had designed the very trade systems that opened the country’s doors to foreign wealth.

So much affluence in the region boded well for the campaign, Charlie would say. The General would be able to capitalize on his successes when economic policy became the topic of a debate. There would be debates, hours and hours of debates and interviews and coffees and dinners and meetings with donors and events that would pull him out of the office and drive her mad with overtime. She did not resent him for it, of course. It was all necessary. For years they had worked and waited and they were so close. She would do whatever she had to do to reach their goal.

Eastern headquarters dominated the skyline, a trophy from the military revolt against the monarchy over a century before. Embellishments from the façade of the old palace had been stripped and melted down to pad the treasury during the same uprising, and the palace had been repurposed as a lasting reminder of the stratocracy’s triumph over tyrannical rule.

All of it had been a fabrication, a masquerade of political progress put on so the powers in shadow could facilitate their nation-wide alchemical experiment with the carnage of rebellion.

A new, quieter revolution was underway. If they made the right choices, the country would survive it with no bloodshed.

There was a spot on the curb where no one but the General parked. No one else would dare.

She climbed the towering stairs to the main doors and walked down the hall to the General’s office while returning greetings from other officers and enlisted personnel. 

Havoc was outside the door when she arrived. He had a file clamped under one arm and he was struggling to open the door while balancing on his crutches. She reached around him and turned the knob.

He turned his head, ready to snap at her. “I can—” He stopped. “Oh, sorry.” He cleared his throat, embarrassed by his near outburst. “I didn’t…”

“Is he here?” she asked as she walked into the room. He would be more comfortable if they could both acknowledge she had been opening the door for herself, if they could both pretend that she had not noticed how he had almost spoken to her. She did not blame him for it, and she never would. Mellie, his wife and a physical therapy nurse, had once told her that one day he would stop interpreting help as pity, but that day had not come.

Havoc hobbled after her on his forearm crutches and lowered himself into his desk chair. “Disappeared into his office with a stack of papers just after you left,” he said as he leaned his crutches against the wall behind him and pulled the file from under his arm. “He said he’d roast us if we disturbed him, so you’re probably fine to go in.”

“What do you want to bet he’s talking to one of his girls?” Breda asked from his desk as he perused a report.

“No bet,” Havoc said.

Riza sat at her own desk and gathered a few documents. Notes from the trade meeting the day before. A brief on the desert situation for the meeting in the afternoon. A few telegrams dropped on her desk while she had been out.

“You think he’s working?” Breda asked.

Havoc snorted. “I think he’s doing anything but. Cleaning windows and reorganizing his pen drawer. Something like that.”

“He could be working,” Fuery said as he turned down the chatter on his radio and looked up from a sizeable report he had received that morning on a regional communications update. “He’s been doing that lately.”

Breda guffawed while Havoc said, “Fuery the Optimist.”

She glanced through the telegrams. There were a few from the North, one from the West, one from the Führer’s office.

“Five hundred cenz?” Breda proposed.

“Cheap!” Havoc said. “That worked five years ago, but now that won’t even buy my lunch.”

“You want to double it?”

“I think he’s working,” Falman said. He was busy finalizing reports regarding the joint training. “But I think he’s working on the campaign.”

She had almost forgotten the corrected trade agreement draft. She pulled it out of a drawer and stood up.

Havoc whistled and leaned back in his chair, the wood groaning from strain. “We have a pool going. You in, Hawkeye?”

She glared at them. “No.” Then she walked to the General’s office, and she paused and said, “Sleeping.” Then she opened the door.

He was sitting with his eyes closed at his dark wood desk, shirt sleeves rolled up, top buttons undone, head in one hand while his glasses slid down his nose and his other hand held down the pages of a soft-bound book.

“He’s sleeping, isn’t he?” Breda said.

She looked back into the main office and said, “You can leave the money on my desk.” As she closed the door behind her, she saw Havoc throw his pen onto his desk and heard Breda groan, “Why wasn’t that my first guess?”

“Sir,” she called. He did not stir, but he began to softly snore, so she said again, “Sir.”

He hummed and jumped a little, and his glasses fell off and hit the felt writing pad, but in a moment he was snoring again.

“General.” She walked around the desk to where he sat and shook his shoulder. “General!” When he still did not move, she shook harder. “General Mustang!”

He inhaled sharply and sat up. “What?” He looked at her and the office and the book on his desk and frowned. “Oh.” He ran a hand down his face and yawned. “Fullmetal gone?”

“Yes, Sir.” She watched as he rubbed at his eyes before adding, “Sir, if you need to sleep, you should go home.”

He shook his head and stood up. “I don’t have time. This was a fluke.”

She smiled and watched him close his book and place it inside a drawer. She would have to make him stay and organize his desk later. She pulled his keys out of her jacket pocket and set them on his desk with the papers she had brought.

He muttered something indiscernible and walked to the door and back, to the door and back, pacing to wake himself. “I’ve been drowning in economics since you left,” he said as he reached his desk and leaned both hands on the top. “This problem with crops is getting out of hand.”

“I’m not familiar, Sir.” Newspapers heralded the surplus of food within the country as a sign of national wealth. She was unsure about how that could be a problem.

“Farmers taking out loans to afford heavy machinery to work larger areas of land to turn a profit…” He trailed off and sat down in his chair. “But exports have slowed because of the railroad nonsense.”

She nodded. Everything seemed to hinge on the situation in the desert.

“And the increased amount of produce on the market means that while currency is inflating, prices are deflating.” He put his glasses on, and she was surprised. His head must have been hurting. “And the surplus means they can’t sell their produce, so they’re not making nearly enough to pay back what they borrowed.” He scanned the front page of the notes from the day before. “And these interest rates are astronomical. And no one knows how to fix it outside of getting everyone to back off the railway and accept the desert as neutral territory, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Plus, we’d lose our trade route, unless we start using those Xingese aeroplanes, which could introduce even more problems with Drachma.”

She nodded. That she knew about. Drachma had spent years developing a biplane, a giant, metal flying machine with wings and enough space for someone to steer and for lighter cargo. Xing had adapted the model to carry heavier loads and to fly longer distances, which Drachma had interpreted as a sign of aggression. Bombers, the King and Council in Voiska had called them, though Riza thought they could not make that assumption unless bombing was their intent as well. Amestrian usage of the biplanes would be construed as a violation of their own non-aggression pact, and the two countries would be at war again.

He dropped the notes and looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe if we just…paid farmers to…not farm…” He sighed. “It would decrease the inflation of the food market and increase produce and farm prices.” He sat up straight. “But that’s crazy, isn’t it? Absolutely crazy.”

She waited while he worked out his hypothesis aloud like he often did. Alchemists.

After a moment, he leaned back in his chair. “But it doesn’t…Parliament will take another loan from Creta to fix the issue. They will own the country by the end of the decade.” He rubbed his temples, pushing his glasses above his eyebrows. “Charlie says I can’t talk about it at these donor luncheons, because wealthy people don’t like hearing about economic downturn. It scares them and makes them hold their checkbooks tighter. And ‘money wins elections.’” He dropped his hands onto his desk and his glasses fell back into place. “The man has so many platitudes, he could sell them.”

“He does sell them,” she said. “He sells them to you.”

He snapped and pointed at her. “That’s true. Don’t say it again.” He picked up the brief and read the front page. “Rebecca is going to be at the announcement party next week with her husband.”

Riza nodded. Rebecca and Leo Minter knew the ill-kept secret about the campaign, and they had already pledged more money than Riza made in ten years. “She told me.”

“She has always impressed me,” he continued. “She always wanted to find a man with ample wealth to retire on. And she did it.” He shrugged. “She’s very driven.”

Riza looked down and laughed. Rebecca had not retired, as she had originally intended, for she served on the board of her husband’s company. It was true, though, that she had always had an astonishing work ethic. It was that same quality that had made Führer Grumman ask her to work for him in Central after his appointment. There she had met oil baron Leopold Minter, she had fallen in love, and she had married him. Rebecca was happy, and Riza thought her lucky.

She raised her head, and Roy was looking at her in that way that made her feel as if she were on the edge of a cliff. If she stepped forward, she would tumble over, and she wanted to. Her breath caught in her throat and her chest tightened.

“Sir,” she said as a reminder to herself and to him of who and where they were, “have you heard from Alphonse?”

He shook his head and swallowed. “No. What did Edward say?” he asked, his voice tight.

“He hasn’t heard from him either,” she said. The boys mattered so much more than her own problems did.

The General rubbed a hand over his jaw. “They should have pulled him months ago.” He shuffled through the telegrams. “I’ll call the Minister of State and tell him—Oh, great.” He held up the slip from the Führer’s office. “This actually works well. I can go over his head.” He picked up the telephone receiver on his desk and dialed a string of numbers, then rattled off his name and security clearance code to the operator. While he waited, he covered the receiver and whispered, “You don’t have to stay if you’re busy.”

She was not busy, but she needed to get away from the office and the cliff’s edge. He would tell her if there was any news about Alphonse. So she walked back to the main office.

“Führer, Sir,” she heard him say as she left. “I wanted—Oh, she’s well, Sir.” He laughed. “Maybe after I ask you about something else first…”

The door closed behind her and she took a deep breath. The Führer always asked about her, she knew, though the General never said anything. Grumman was the only family she had left, though even after years of knowing who he was, she still did not know him. She didn’t know how to know him. The General understood and never mentioned her discomfort. That was good of him.

“Major,” Havoc said from his desk, “do you have the key for that cabinet with past incident reports?”

She and the General had spent so many years in each other’s company, a constant dichotomy of unity and separation. She recalled the first, and only, time he had kissed her. It had been less than a year after their return from Ishval, and the whole office had gone to a bar to celebrate Breda’s birthday. The rest of the team had left, and she and Roy had both indulged in one too many drinks. She had laughed at something he had said—he always forgot himself when she laughed and she needed to stop doing it—and he had leaned in. After a moment, sobriety and reality had hit her, and she had pulled away. He had looked down, unable to meet her eyes, and had apologized. She had said, “At least we don’t have to wonder anymore.”

Except she had wondered. She had wondered every day, and she knew he had too. If he did not win the election, she would probably die wondering. That was a selfish thought, and she closed her eyes against it.

“Major Hawkeye?”

She looked up at Havoc, who was still waiting for an answer.

“The key?”

“Yes,” she said. She fished the key from her pen drawer and passed it to him. Havoc nodded and used his crutches to stand while Riza glanced over a short list of tasks she had stuck on her desk that morning.

There were many, far more vital reasons he needed to win the election. Lasting peace in the East. Economic security, if he could solve the farming problem. The continued journey toward a true democracy and total justice. She had believed it years before, and she believed it still. The future of the country lay with him.

* * *

The sun hung low, sending an explosion of colour across the sky. Pink and orange streaked the horizon, and the light of dusk burned leaves and windows golden. He shielded his eyes against the bright light as he disembarked.

There were few buildings by the station—the town of Resembool lay a few kilometers to the west—but the distribution center was just next to the tracks. It had to be. Every day, shipments arrived by truck and were loaded into train cars for transport to Ishval and then beyond. At least they had until three months before when the track out of Amestris had been closed.

The center was quiet when he passed it, and only a few of the military workers lounged by the covered trucks, their jackets off as they waited for their shift to be over. One of them, red-haired and barely older than Edward, waved. Hennessy, at least Edward thought his name was Hennessy, had been complaining in town over the months as work had slowed. He had no problem with working less, he had claimed, but the boredom had become unbearable and he wanted either more shipments to move or fewer men to move them.

Edward waved back and continued down the road toward town. Farms dotted the landscape, fields plowed and ready for winter wheat planting. A few had tried avoiding the spring harvest competition by planting earlier in the year and harvesting in the fall, and those light green stalks waved in the wind.

More than one landowner was worried about not making a profit due to the desert railroad blockade. He had overheard talks about needing to lay off hands if the situation had not improved by winter. He knew Mustang was worried. Wealth still pooled and flowed through cities as luxury good production increased and investors reaped the benefits, but farming towns like Resembool were beginning to hurt in spite of it, and for all his bravado and selfishness, Mustang cared about the country.

He passed a hill where flowers and vines had reclaimed a charred foundation. He crossed a stone bridge from which Al had once pushed him when they were boys. The river had been higher then. Beyond the bridge and up a path was the cemetery. His parents lay there, Winry’s parents lay there, and Granny Pinako had joined them after living long enough to meet her first great-grandson.

It was dark when he reached the little lane that led to his home, and he smiled. It was a white house with green trim, common in the countryside, but this house was special. He had spent years in the kitchen, sitting around the table with the people he loved most. Winry had promised a berry pie upon his return. His mouth watered as he thought of raspberries and a flaky crust, and he almost didn’t notice the man shuffling away from the house with his head down.

Edward greeted him, and the man, a farmer named Gerhold, nodded and grunted and continued on his way. Edward frowned and walked up the short set of stairs and pushed open the front door. “I’m home.”

Winry straightened up from her position bent over her workbench and wiped her hands on a towel. She smiled when he kissed her cheek. “Welcome back.”

“Gerhold looked upset,” he said as he set his case on the floor.

She sighed and dropped her towel and pulled the ribbon out of her hair, letting it fall free. “He’s just stressed about the harvest. His appointment went well. He’s doing well. His recovery is going…” Her eyes darted to the desk where the accounts ledger still lay open, and he knew what it would say. “He’s been working,” she finished.

“Good,” he said, though he felt his shoulders tensing. Not again.

“Pie!” she said with a too-bright grin, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

He walked to the ledger and ran his finger down the page until he found Gerhold’s name, the amount owed listed next to it, and the tiny, black “c” next to that. “Winry.”

“We had some cans of peaches left,” she said as she waddled back into the front room with a pie tin, a server, a small plate, and a fork balanced on her heavy belly. The pie smelled sweet and warm, but she was trying to distract him. She set the tin down on the page he had been reading and cut into the woven crust. “So I thought peaches and blueberries—”

“Winry, stop.”

She pushed a slice of pie onto the plate and jammed the fork into the fruit filling. “I’ve been waiting on you to try it, though. Be honest—”

He put one hand on hers before she could lift the fork from the plate. “You can’t keep doing this.”

She abandoned the fork and smoothed the front of her blouse. “I know.”

The savings he had accumulated during his time in the military were dwindling. She knew that. “The account is drying up, and we’re in the red.”

She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “They can’t pay, Ed.”

“And we can’t feed two kids on credit!” Winry would never turn away a patient for their finances, he knew, and he hated the idea himself, but they had their family to consider.

“Actually, we can,” she said, and she dug through a small stack of papers on the corner of the desk until she pulled out the town newsletter. “Byerson’s just started taking store credit. It’ll be fine.”

He picked up the page and read. There was a meeting in the old church for the concerned farmers, a wanted advertisement for a replacement teacher, and a picture from the grocer declaring that at long last they were operating on faith-based payment.

“It’ll be fine,” she repeated, and she put a hand on his arm. “The rail blockade will end, and money will start coming in again. It’ll be fine.”

He set the letter down and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, though he was not convinced. They could return to the conversation later, but he did not want an argument when he had just arrived home.

Winry rubbed her neck and yawned.

“You alright?”

She shrugged and lowered herself into the desk chair. “Just tired. I got Yuriy down for a nap just before Gerhold came. And now I’m going to take one myself, so he’s your problem when he wakes up.”

He picked up the plate as she let her head fall back. “You’re just going to sleep there?”

“Hmm.” She nudged his leg with her toe. “You still haven’t told me how it went. What did he say about your…gravity thing?”

“Oh, that.” He took a bite of the pie. It was no longer warm, but it was sweet and tart balanced in a way only she could accomplish. “It’s really good,” he told her. “He told me he’s going to get back to me after he makes his announcement.”

She opened her eyes and raised one eyebrow.

He took another bite. “It’s definitely political. He needs to look like he still keeps in touch with the little people.”

“And Al?” she asked.

He swallowed. He had been trying not to think about that. He put the plate down and crossed his arms. “It’s probably nothing, Winry,” he said more to himself. “I talked to Riza. If he knew anything he would have told her. And she wouldn’t lie about—”

A loud boom like thunder cut him off. He and Winry looked toward the open door and the darkness outside.

She sat up. “Rain?”

“It couldn’t be,” he said. The sky had been clear of clouds. He walked onto the porch and looked down the road toward the train station. There was a small plume of smoke on the horizon, glowing a bright orange against the dark purple sky.

“Oh, god,” Winry whispered behind him. “Do you think a coal cart caught a spark?”

He shook his head. Coal would not react like that. Coal dust, sure, but not lumps of coal. Coal burned slow. “Stay here,” he said. 

“Ed!”

“Stay here!” Past the path to the graveyard, over the stone bridge, down the road flanked by farm fields. He was at the Kipp farm when he first smelled thick wood smoke with something sweet and subtler, like burning pastries. It could have been grain or sugar or…

“And why does gelignite smell like almonds?” Mustang had asked Edward ten years earlier after an incident in Daub. The answer was simple. An explosive reaction with gelignite produced a compound that also gave almonds their scent. “And what compound is that?” Mustang had asked with a smirk, expecting Edward would not know the answer. But he had known. He did know.

“Benzaldehyde,” he breathed. Then he broke into a sprint, because coal did not explode, and someone had incorrectly packed blasting jelly for transportation, and the train station was in flames, and he had to do something to help. Why would Mustang allow blasting jelly to be sent to Ishval in the first place? Unless he meant to engage with Menimras and end the blockade through force, but surely he would not be so stupid. Surely he would not allow such a shipment to sit in a train car overnight. Surely there was some reasonable explanation for everything.

He slowed when he saw the station master standing outside with a few men who worked for him and the young girl who sometimes managed the telegraph machine. They all watched the blaze, because the station was not burning at all. The distribution center was.

Flames reached upward, sending an explosion of sparks and sooty black plumes into the sky. Orange and yellow licked the walls and smoked billowed through broken windows and the hole in the second story where the wall had been blown away. Wood crackled and burned golden against the black sky.

“Water,” Edward whispered. Then he said louder, “Water. Marsh, we need water!”

The station-master looked at him as if to ask how they could transport water, how they could hope to put out the inferno with the little bucket the station kept for minor emergencies.

“The fire brigade is coming, Mr. Elric,” said the girl. Her name was Kit, he remembered. Kit Hartman. Her father was Resembool’s butcher.

A sharp, chemical odor mixed with the wood smoke and the almond smell. Something chemical was burning. Paint? Bleach and cleaning supplies? Other combustibles exploded with bright flashes, and Kit and Marsh covered their heads and ran toward the station. A sheet of flame overtook the roof and the timbers groaned while the fire cackled in delight.

Edward covered his mouth as he watched, unsure of what he could do.

“Oh, no,” someone said next to him, and he looked down.

“Winry!”

She looked back at him, chest heaving and one hand pressed to her side and belly, and lifted her medical bag. “I thought someone might be hurt.”

A support beam creaked and then crashed in on the burning floor, sending a spray of sparks into the air. Someone screamed.

Winry grabbed his arm. “There are people inside! Ed, there are people still inside!” She darted forward, but he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back.

“No!”

The station master told Kit to run and pull farmers from their houses to help. The other station workers darted away as well, one going for the one bucket and others running to pull people from their dinner tables and porches and beds, if necessary.

Winry pulled against his hands. “Ed, we have to do something!”

He spun her around and shook her. “Winry, you can’t!” It was benzaldehyde. He knew it was benzaldehyde, and he knew that the distribution center would never keep gelignite near food and construction supplies and other necessities, which meant someone had brought jelly in. Someone had ignited it. Old safety drills and lectures ran through his mind. A second explosion would follow. She was pregnant with their child, and he did not know what he would do if she were hurt. “The building is still burning, and—”

“And if we don’t, who will?” she said.

“You can’t help anyone if you’re dead!” He needed her to listen. He would say anything to make her listen. “Think about Yuriy and the baby. At least think about them.”

The second explosion followed, a loud boom that shook the ground and sent smoke billowing. The remaining windows burst, wood splintered, and debris showered down. Edward pushed Winry down and hovered over her. Gelignite was heat-sensitive, and he had no way of knowing if a third or fourth explosion would come. She had to leave.

“Oh, god,” she murmured, and then she tore away from him, running toward the trucks and leaning over a lump on the ground.

“Winry!”

“Ed, help!” 

He stumbled after her, shards of glass crunching under his feet, but he tripped over something small and silvery in the debris. He bent down and picked it up. It was a metal box no bigger than his fist, and there was a winding key stuck into the side. He looked up at the burning building. Why had there been a music box in there?

“Ed!”

He stuffed the box into his pocket and ran to his wife where she crouched over a man, who lay groaning on the ground. The skin around his neck and face was blistered and red, his arm was bent at an odd shape. His leg was black and his clothing singed, and the nauseating and sweet scent of burned flesh filled Edward’s nose. Had the man been thrown from the blast?

“He can’t walk,” Winry said, her voice full of authority. “Help me carry him to the station steps.”

Edward slipped an arm under the man’s back and hauled him to a half-standing position. The man screamed and Winry whispered words of comfort. This was where she excelled, with carnage in front of her and medical supplies at the ready. Together, they dragged the man to the train station as a truck with a blaring horn screeched to a halt in the road.

Townspeople tumbled out of the truck and ran a large hose to the riverbed while two people climbed into the truck bed and unwound another hose tied to the pump.

“Dr. Maller!” Winry cried, and the older doctor jumped from the passenger side of the fire truck and trotted to them.

He looked at the man and back at Winry. “I can take care of more minor injuries and burns, but I’ll defer to you on major trauma.”

Winry nodded. “We can set up triage inside,” she said as she jerked her head toward the train station. “Make use of the benches.”

Maller took Edward’s place and lifted the man to take him inside while still carrying his own medical bag. “I brought what I could, but my wife is coming with more…”

Edward watched them go and turned back to the blaze and the people running with a water hose and buckets of sand to throw on crops to keep them from catching.

There was a time when he could have done something. He could have made a wall of sand and stone to stop the fire from spreading to nearby fields. He could have redirected the river. He could have stopped the blaze within seconds of his arrival. He had lost that time, he had looked at Truth and given away his ability to help freely, and watching in horror was all he could do. No, he could help still. He could carry buckets of sand and help pump the hose. He was a person, a normal person, and even a normal person could—

“Yuriy!” Winry cried behind him, and he wheeled around. She barreled down the steps and grabbed his arms. “Yuriy is at home!” She had pulled her ribbon from her pocket and was tying her hair out of her face. “Ed, I can help here.”

She had not meant that he could not, but he felt it in her words anyway. “I’ll go.”

“Ed.”

“I’ll check on him,” he said, and he pulled away and left her standing in the midst of the chaos, as someone shouted they had pulled out another survivor. He watched her go where she was needed, where her unique talents could do something.

Past the fields again, because someone had to stay with Yuriy, and Winry’s skills were needed at the distribution center. Across the stone bridge, away from his wife who might be injured by flying debris and uncontrollable flames. Up the dark path to their home, where he would be far from disaster but useful. Another truck rushed down the road as he opened the front door, and he watched it race toward the pillar of smoke and fire in the distance.

Someone needed to be with his son, he reminded himself. He could help by being with his son.

Yuriy was standing in his crib when Edward walked into his bedroom. He waved his chubby arms and smiled wide at his father.

Edward picked him up and patted his back. “Mommy’s on her way,” he told him. “You hungry?”

“Hungee!”

The house was quiet as Edward fed his son a dinner of berries and cold sliced chicken and cooked carrots. He wondered at what was happening down the road as he gave Yuriy his bath and dressed him for bed. Was Winry alright? Were the soldiers all out of the building? Had the fire been put out?

“Book!” Yuriy cried when they went back into the bedroom.

“Which one?” Edward asked as he brought Yuriy to the shelf. The boy patted a heavy one with a cloth bookmark sticking out of the top, and Edward settled them into the rocking chair near the window so he could watch for Winry. She’d be coming up the road any second. He opened the book to the marked page and scanned the text. “Alright. Let’s see here…Little man spins a room full of gold from a room full of straw…” He shook his head. “Well that’s just fundamentally incorrect,” he said to Yuriy. “Even if you move subatomic particle around, you still cannot change the atomic mass of what’s in the room. And you have to remember that gold is much more massive than carbon is, and straw is mostly carbon.” He watched Yuriy chew his fingers. “Say ‘mass.’”

“Mash,” Yuriy replied.

“Good job.” Edward looked back at the book and read, “‘In the morning, the king came into the room…’” He lowered the book again. “There’s also space between atoms, you know,” he said, because talking about science had a soothing effect. Some things were certain, and if he could predict how elements would behave, then Winry would come home safe. It was a leap in logic, he knew, but it was all he had. “And within objects. Straw is mostly hollow, and it doesn’t condense well. You can’t…A block of carbon will weigh much less than a block of gold the same size. The structure of bonds is important. Atomic mass is too, and mass cannot be created or destroyed. Say ‘equivalent exchange.’”

“Kibbenshange.”

“Exactly.” Edward traced a line of text. “So when you examine this problem from an alchemical perspective, the room would hardly be full when the little man lumped all the gold together. It’d be…” He paused while he did the calculation in his head. “Less than a tenth the size of the straw pile. I can’t imagine this king would be too pleased.” He looked from the page to his son. “This is what Mommy has been reading you?”

Mommy, who was fighting a fire started by people who had access to military-grade explosives. What was the last thing he had said to her? Why hadn’t he told her he loved her? She would be home later, and it wouldn’t matter anymore.

Unless she ran triage through the night. She had a tendency to absorb herself in her work, to not realize the time that had passed. She would stay up several nights in a row, forgetting to eat. She would be hungry when she arrived home. He should set something out for her. He considered going down to the scene again with something for her to eat, but she might turn him away.

If she was not back by sunrise, he would take Yuriy to the station with some coffee and breakfast.

Yuriy pointed to the picture in the book. “Man little.” He reached up and tapped Edward’s face. “Daddy big.”

Edward nodded. “That’s absolutely right.” He sighed and shifted as Yuriy rested his head on his shoulder. His son was smart. He’d be an alchemist yet. “I should still buy you better books.”

He read three pages of nonsense before Yuriy fell asleep in his arms, and he placed him in his crib and stole from the room. He sat down at the desk in the front room and pulled out the silver box, turning it over in his hands and studying tell-tale lines on the sides. He stayed there for hours, and it was growing light outside before the front door opened and Winry walked in, dropping her bag on the floor and slumping against the wall.

“Hey,” he said, and he stood and guided her to the chair.

“Everyone is alive,” she told him. “Maller is keeping a couple of them today for observation, and he’ll call if anything goes wrong.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Where’s Yuriy?”

“Sleeping still.”

Winry yawned again. He was about to tell her to go to bed, but she looked at the box in his hand and said, “What’s that?”

He lifted it. “It’s…I found it outside, in some glass debris.”

“You took it?”

He traced the lines on the side again. “I think it might be relevant. Like, evidence.”

She sat up straight. “You took evidence?” Then she shook her head, because that was not the unbelievable part. “Evidence of what?”

The rest of the town would call it a tragic accident. Few would have encountered plastic explosives, and fewer still would suppose that the destruction of the distribution center would have stemmed from any malevolence. “If it’s evidence,” he said, “I’ll tell Mustang. But…” He handed the box to her. “I’ve been thinking about it all night.” He pointed to the sides. “There are recent transmutation lines. Why would someone transmute a music box shut?”

She raised one eyebrow at him to remind him of a certain pocket watch.

“I know,” he said. “But that proves my point, doesn’t it? Something is in here.” Thus began his hypothesis. The evidence would follow. “I think it was thrown from the building, from a window. As far as I know, no one ships sealed music boxes in or out of the country, so someone was trying to hide something. I’d assume a spy message of some sort, but after tonight...” He looked out the window at the rising sun. “Last night,” he corrected. “If it was meant to be hidden, it would have been stuffed in a box, and if it was meant to be destroyed, it would have been tied to the bomb, not placed in a window where it could fly away from the explosion with broken glass—”

“You think it was a bomb?” she whispered.

He took a deep breath. “I think based on where it fell and what it is…someone meant for us to find it.”

She looked down at the box and up at him. “And you took it?”

He threw his hands in the air. “Yes, Winry! I took it! Can we focus on the real issue?”

Winry pushed herself out of the chair and walked toward her workbench. “It’s steel. Good steel. Why…” She shook her head. “No one would make a music box out of this.”

“They could have lined the outside,” he said.

She nodded. “To keep whatever is…”

To keep whatever was inside safe. His pulse raced. He was right. He had to be right.

Winry yanked open a drawer and rummaged around.

“What are you doing?”

She straightened and held up a hacksaw. Her eyes were wide. “We have to open it.”

He walked to her and accepted the mask and goggles she passed him. “Weren’t you just upset about how I took it? Now you want to open it?”

She slipped the straps of her mask over her ears and put on the tinted glasses she used when performing small welding work. “Now I want to know what exactly you took.” She locked the box into a clamp and started sawing.

He watched over her shoulder, something she hated on a normal day, but she said nothing until the saw passed through the music box. She loosened the clamp, and the two halves clattered onto the table, and a small roll of paper fell out. Edward picked it up and flattened it while Winry looked on. 

Her breath hitched. “You have General Mustang’s office number?”

He nodded. “On the corkboard in the kitchen.” She scurried away, and he called after her, “Riza will pick up, but she’ll put you through.”

Winry was right to want to call Mustang, just as Edward had been right that the explosion had been intentional. It had been a bomb. Someone had wanted the message to be found. The target made perfect sense, because someone was trying to destroy the lifeblood of the Ishvalan region, perhaps Ishval itself.

His hands shook and he held his breath as he read the single line of text again.

“An Amestrian future for an Amestrian people.”


	3. Chapter 3

He was used to smiling and shaking hands and being the most charming person in the room, but his cheeks were growing stiff from the effort of looking genuinely pleased to see every person who spoke to him. He needed to speak to each one, Charlie had insisted. The pockets of the people in this room were deeper than even Mustang, with his State Alchemist’s grants and general’s salary, could imagine, and each pocket could be emptied into the campaign fund.

The idea was not foreign to him. He understood the importance of remembering a name here and a personal interest there. He had built his career on connections to the powerful, but while he had once used his knowledge to push powerful people out of his path, he needed them to build the road for him.

Yet the whole affair seemed trivial in the face of other issues. He had been putting in requests for updates on Alphonse Elric, but the Ministry of State had told him the information was above his clearance level, which was just as insulting as it was worrying. He had sent Breda to investigate the destruction of the distribution center in Resembool two weeks earlier, and no evidence beyond Fullmetal’s scrap of paper had surfaced. His campaign team continued to hound him about his marital status, and the reporter had dodged offers for interviews, citing the third broken engagement of Nadine Feld, a canning heiress from the West, as more diverting. He had at least been asked to comment, given his alleged affair with Nadine three years before, but he gave the same statement he had back then: the rumours were unfounded, and nothing had ever happened.

When he announced his candidacy that afternoon, his life would be more newsworthy than that of someone who stood to inherit millions of canned mushrooms.

Hawkeye appeared at his side in a brief moment of respite, between trays of canapés and sparkling Cretan wine. She had been right. He had needed a larger home for entertaining supporters and hosting private parties. Men and women stood around his parlor and dining room and hall, making small talk and dropping pieces of gossip.

“Neumann and Charlie really outdid themselves,” he said to her. His scheduler and campaign manager had pulled together an event with dozens of industry tycoons. Lumber, steel, oil, glass and several smaller industries. They had considered his image of a man of the masses, recalling the old adage “alchemist be thou for the people,” and had invited mostly those who had been outspoken about fair wages. A few in attendance had even formed coalitions to promote better conditions for factory workers.

“I haven’t spoken to Rebecca and Leo yet,” he said as he spotted the couple in the corner. Rebecca was making a group laugh while her husband stood straight and firm. He was a quiet man, but he exuded a certain confidence and was never overshadowed by his more vivacious wife.

“They wanted to wait until you had time to catch your breath,” she said. She looked lovely with her hair pulled back in waves like that and in her brown velvet dress. It was her day off and she was in attendance as a friend, and he was glad of it.

“That’s good of them.” He grabbed two flutes off a passing tray and handed one to her. Charlie had said there would be many such events, all opulent and bordering on garish, and even more smaller coffees and town halls for smaller donors. He had to please the wealthy and maintain his image as a common person. It was a delicate line, but one Charlie assured him he could walk and was necessary. It was the money. Everything was about money and image at the beginning, his manager had told him. Policy could wait for the debate stage.

Falman squeezed between Mustang and Hawkeye. “Diedrich Sommer,” he said, nodding to a robust gentleman headed their way. “You met him last year at the Führer’s birthday gala. Works in lumber in the North and gave all his workers a ten percent raise this year. His daughter, Mathilde, is starting university next month.” Falman was returning to the North in a few weeks, and unlike Hawkeye, he did not work directly under Mustang and was free to volunteer for the campaign until distance made the work impossible. Mustang had found the man’s memory invaluable.

He stuck out his hand as the lumber baron approached. “Diedrich. Good to see you.”

“General Mustang,” said Sommer with a wide grin under a bushy moustache. “Quite the event, eh? I have to say I admire your taste.”

“And I admire your approach to employee wages,” Mustang replied.

“All selfishness, I assure you,” Sommer said with a loud laugh. “Happy workers are productive workers, and that means more profit for me.”

“If only all businessmen were so far-sighted.”

Sommer slapped him hard on the back. “There’s a good many more of us pushing for worker’s rights, and we’d like to see some movement at the, ah, federal level.” He took a sip from a tumbler of whisky. “We’ve all heard you might be throwing your cap into the fight.”

Mustang smiled. It was an open secret, made more obvious by the luncheon, and he would confirm the rumours in a few minutes. “How’s Mathilde?”

Sommer guffawed. “Anxious to get out of the house. Harriet is making it worse by playing the overbearing mother—”

“Sir,” Hawkeye said as she tapped his arm and darted her eyes toward the front door.

Corporal Nagel pushed through the crowd toward him, and Mustang made his excuses to Sommer and moved through the sea of guests to meet her. Hawkeye followed close behind, as she always did.

“Sir,” she said when they met near the foot of the stairs where the crowd was thinner, “we just received word that an aeroplane has landed in the training yard north of town.”

His mind reeled as he wondered who would be stupid enough to land an aeroplane in an active training area. The pilot must have known there was a risk of the Amestrian military firing and still they had landed an aeroplane unannounced. He fought the urge to drag both women upstairs, which, while professional in truth, would start tongues wagging for all the wrong reasons. “What?”

The young corporal looked at Hawkeye and back at him. “An…an aeroplane, Sir.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through the nose. The very idea that we would need to ask for further information, that the corporal had taken his question literally and had not expounded on her earlier statement—He felt Hawkeye’s hand on his arm.

“Whose aeroplane?” Her voice was soft and firm and calming to him. She knew. She always knew what he needed.

“It’s Alphonse Elric, Ma’am. The guards have taken him into custody.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, and Hawkeye tightened her grip on his arm, reminding him to breathe and not swear too loudly in front of the guests who might be beginning to wonder what was happening at the foot of the stairs. “Of course they did.”

“Colonel Klein awaits your orders, Sir.”

He opened his eyes and looked at Hawkeye. She released his arm before anyone could notice and looked back at him. “Central should have told us about this.” It was a blatant disregard for his authority in his jurisdiction. Basic courtesy was too much to expect. Then he thought of dozens of letters he had sent and hours he had spent on the telephone requesting information on the younger Elric. His position and interest deserved notice. “Did they send any word of his arrival?” If anyone knew for certain, she would.

She shook her head. “Our office never received anything, Sir.”

How typical. “Corporal, tell the Colonel to take Elric to Headquarters. I’m sending Major Hawkeye ahead of me, and she will be acting with my full authority. Whatever she says goes.” He turned his full attention to Hawkeye as the corporal pushed back through the crowd. He took a deep breath. Whether the absurd turn of events was the fault of a bureaucratic Ministry or the usual brand of Elric-manufactured disaster, it was too much. He hissed, “The last thing I need today—”

“Sir,” she said as she held a hand up.

“—Is the ambassador I recommended showing up unannounced—”

“Sir.”

“—And getting himself arrested—”

“Sir, you need to calm down!” She placed their flutes on an accent table, grabbed his elbow again, and pulled him through the crowd and out the front door.

“And I have to answer press questions after this,” he said as they stopped at the top of the stoop. It was a good spot for a discreet conversation, public but well outside the earshot of luncheon guests. “What are the chances they already know?”

“I don’t know, Sir, but you can’t lose your temper here.”

He snorted. “Did Charlie brief you before this?”

“Believe me, Sir,” she said with narrowed eyes, “I don’t need Charlie to brief me on your flaws.”

“My flaws?”

“If you lose your temper,” she said, pointing at the door and the luncheon behind it, “and they’ll say you’re unstable.”

He looked toward the road and watched an automobile speed past and a small family with a large dog walk by. She was right. He looked back at her, and she was watching the same simple neighbourhood scene with a curious expression. He said, “Stay for the announcement, then head to the office.” They both had the day off, but she would agree that this matter took priority over personal time. “You should arrive around the same—”

The door flew open, and Charlie said, “What the hell are you doing out here? It’s now!”

Mustang checked his pocket watch. Thirteen-hundred hours. “Damn it.” He looked at Charlie. “I’ll be right there.”

Charlie threw his hands in the air and said to Hawkeye, “We work for him. You’d never know.” Then he disappeared back into the townhouse.

Mustang turned back to Hawkeye and wished he had eaten something before the speech. “How do I look?”

She considered him with pursed lips and tapped her chest just below the hollow of her throat. “You need to fix your tie.”

He tugged at it until he thought it was centered, but she sighed and reached out. “Let me,” she said as she undid the knot and adjusted the blade and tail. He was not great at tying ties. Two swords through his hands nine years before had left him with less dexterity than he had once had, but her touch was always steady. Riza laughed a little. “You can never get the dimple centered.”

That laugh. What he wouldn’t give to lean in and taste that laugh. He watched her make quick work of the tie, and when she looked up, her held her gaze for far longer than was necessary. She really did look lovely. She swallowed and tightened the loop, and he stepped back and her hands fell to her sides.

“Right,” he said, and his voice creaked, so he cleared his throat. “Better?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “You have your cards?”

He tapped his breast pocket where he had tucked away the short speech. He would not need to look, as he had memorized it, but she had insisted that he keep the cards with him just in case.

She nodded and opened the front door.

Mustang walked ahead, knowing she would follow him inside but would choose to stay near the exit so she could slip away. He grabbed one of the flutes from the table and walked toward the fireplace in the parlour where Charlie was busy introducing him. He made a joke and the crowd tittered. Then Charlie gestured to Mustang and stepped aside.

Mustang nodded to the smattering of applause, and he saw Hawkeye smile at him from across the room. He smiled back. Then he turned his attention to the room and widened his grin. In a few seconds, he would be a candidate.

“I wanted to thank you all for coming.”

* * *

Her heels thudded against the hard wood of the hallway. Colonel Klein had met her at the at the main gate and had told her that Alphonse and his wife—both of them!—were waiting in the General’s office. The Colonel had left them in the care of Captain Havoc, who had been unfortunate enough to be assigned the weekend shift.

Other personnel pressed themselves against the wall as she passed, sometimes giving her a hasty salute that she did not acknowledge. Riza knew the General would race to the office as soon as he was free from press questions, and she would not have long to speak with Alphonse alone. 

When she walked into the main office, Havoc did not look up from his desk but jerked his thumb toward the General’s door. She threw it open, and there he was, talking in a low voice with the Chang princess.

He was taller than his brother, but he had the same light hair, though he kept his short, and unusual golden eyes. Alphonse smiled at her, and she felt weeks of tension evaporate.

“Alphonse,” she breathed.

“Hey, Riza,” he said, and she ran forward and thew her arms around the boy’s neck. He hugged her in return.

He was so solid and real, but his defined shoulder blades gave her pause, and she pulled back to look at him. His cheekbones were sharper than she remembered, his skin paler than she would have liked. “Don’t they feed you in that palace?”

He ran his hand through his hair and laughed a little. “Yeah. Well, you know.” He shrugged.

She did not know. “Have you called your brother?” When Alphonse shook his head, she said, “He’s been asking about you.”

He swallowed and stepped back from her. “I thought he might be.”

She sighed. Even if Alphonse had not contacted the General or Central, she thought he would have at least telephoned Edward. “Alphonse, you need to call him.” She looked at the girl next to him, so much shorter and darker featured. “Hello, Mei.”

Mei smiled. “Hello, Miss Riza.”

Their hug was shorter and less affectionate. Riza thought the girl very sweet and brave, and she owed her a debt. Mei had once saved Riza’s life before they had known each other’s names. Yet their entire relationship still hinged on their knowing Alphonse.

“You look nice,” said Alphonse.

There was a question in the observation for which she did not have the time. “Sit down,” she said, gesturing to one of the green sofas in the General’s office. There were two of them, situated on either side of a low table, and she sat opposite the young couple so she could watch them both. A tightening in her shoulders and stomach smothered her temporary relief. “What were you thinking?” she began, and Alphonse had the grace to look remorseful. “Everyone has been worried about you. The General has been putting in requests for information for weeks. You haven’t contacted your family—”

“I know!” he said. “And I’m sorry. Things in Xing have been…” He took Mei’s hand as he thought. “Dicey.”

The desert situation affected everything. “I’m aware. But all that aside, landing an aeroplane in an active training yard?” She clenched her fists, because he was supposed to be the responsible brother. He was supposed to think things through. “What if they had shot you down?”

Alphonse shrugged with a half grin. “It can take a few sniper bullets.”

“And what about a tank shell?” she snapped, and his face fell again. “We have those too.” She took a deep breath. She was not angry, not really, and Alphonse needed to know that she was on his side before the General arrived. “You didn’t send anything ahead to say you’d be coming,” she said, taking her time to make her tone measured. “What if they hadn’t recognized you? You’d be sitting in a cell right now instead of in here.” She leaned forward. “The whole world in on edge right now, Alphonse. You have to tell somebody when you mean to enter the country like this—”

“I wanted to, but—” He looked at Mei and back at Riza. “Beyond getting word to the Ministry, we’ve been worried about sending any messages.”

Mei nodded. “We didn’t know who would be listening.”

An ache formed in Riza’s temples. “You were worried about someone’s overhearing that you were alive, but not about someone’s overhearing government information?”

“There was more to it than that!” he cried. “No one cares about Amestris right now. It’s all about Drachma and Hinyanda and Menimras and…” He breathed in. “And, well, Xing.”

Between the politics and wondering what had Alphonse worried, she remembered what mattered. “Are you alright? Are you both alright?”

Alphonse and Mei shared a look in an unspoken conversation, and Riza’s throat tightened. They nodded.

“Tell me what happened,” she said as she glanced toward the door. He needed to tell her his story quickly, because when the General arrived, he would not want to listen.

Alphonse cleared his throat and adjusted in his seat. “Well, remember how Ling said he was going to unite all the clans?” Edward and Alphonse never called the Emperor of Xing by his title if they could help it. “I’ve literally fed him biscuits from my own pocket,” Edward would say, and Alphonse would agree. “Why would we call him anything other than his name?”

“The thing is,” Alphonse continued, “you can’t end six-thousand years of tradition in less than a decade. Grudges and feuds and infighting are still around.”

“He’s been trying,” Mei said. “He’s been trying to diversify Imperial positions. Picking people from smaller clans and things like that.” She shrugged. “He’s trying.”

He nodded. “But, as you know, nothing fixes itself overnight.” He held up a finger, like he sometimes did when explaining an alchemical theorem. “The last Emperor was Wei, and the Wei clan is not happy that a Yao is on the throne now. Neither are the Guos, the Liaos, the Lius, and the Chengs.”

Riza shook her head and looked at Mei. “Aren’t you Chang?”

Mei pressed a hand to her chest. “I am Chang, but the Chengs aren’t happy.”

Riza furrowed her brow.

“I know,” Alphonse said. “They sound similar. Chang, Cheng.” He waved a hand. “It’s easier to hear when you study—”

“Alphonse,” Riza said, because Xingese pronunciation was the least important part of the discussion.

“Right.” He took a deep breath. “Well, the Changs aren’t too thrilled right now either, come to think of it.”

It seemed she would be getting that lesson whether she wanted it or not. “That’s your family,” she said to Mei.

The princess nodded and smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “Yes.”

Riza had thought, given Mei’s position in the palace and her proximity to the Emperor, that the Changs would be more satisfied than most. “Tell me what happened.”

“You see,” Alphonse began, “there are fifty recognized clans, and—”

“Alphonse,” Riza said with more force. Her headache was worsening and she needed him to get to the point. “I know how it works.” She did not need a history lesson. She needed to know why he was there.

“It’s relevant,” he assured her. “You know the Emperor takes one wife from each clan. But there’s always been one Empress. Or the Empress has fifty husbands and there’s one Emperor. You get it,” he rushed to finish when she clenched her jaw.

“When my brother first became the Emperor, some of his like-minded advisors thought that was the way to go,” Mei explained. “Having fifty wives keeps the clans happy and doesn’t rip apart our entire culture, and not picking an Empress keeps everyone more or less equal. And he’s been bringing smaller clans into the Imperial palace, but—”

“You can’t end six-thousand years of tradition in less than a decade,” Alphonse repeated as he laced his fingers through Mei’s. “Everyone thought that whoever had the first child would be the Empress, and that child would be the next Emperor and that clan would be in power.” He chuckled. “Those were a strange few years.”

“But there are no children,” Mei said before Riza could ask about why the years had been strange. It did not matter, and she could guess. “So now they’re actually fighting for control and trying to push political agendas. And now some of them have banded together and there’s a small…” She trailed off and bit her lip.

“There’s a minor revolt happening,” Alphonse finished.

Riza rested her elbows on her knees and her chin against her folded hands. “You’re avoiding a revolution.” That explanation would at least alleviate the General’s anger.

“Not exactly,” Alphonse said, and she wondered how long his explanation would take. The General would be in the office and shouting before she had a clear idea of what had happened. “Ling has a Chang wife. Yi Xuan.” He looked at Mei. “She’s your fourth….”

“Fifth cousin,” Mei said. “We’ve never known each other well, and things have been…” She squeezed Alphonse’s hand and swallowed. “He has forty-eight wives now, you see. And a government to run, and now this business with Drachma and Hinyanda and Menimras. He doesn’t even talk with all of his wives every week.”

“There’s no Yao wife yet,” Alphonse explained. “And in light of that, the Changs thought that Yi Xuan had the highest chance of becoming the Empress.”

“Ling and I have gotten pretty close,” Mei said.

Alphonse beamed. “Mei is actually the—She was the Minister of Alkahestry and Research.”

Riza nodded. When she had learned of the appointment, she had thought Mei had been young to hold the position. She was the same age Riza had been when she had first gone into war and had made history in Ishval. An accomplished sniper, her superiors had called her, as if the denotation were one of respect.

“But when a couple of years passed and Yi Xuan didn’t become the Empress,” Alphonse said, “the Changs…” He looked at Mei, who ducked her head, and back at Riza. “There have been some pretty vile rumours, and now—”

“I’ve been ostracized,” Mei said, and she straightened her back and hardened her expression. “From my clan.”

Riza knew too well the feeling of being cut off from and neglected by family, and she wanted to reach for the girl and embrace her, but she did not know Mei well enough to do so. “For not putting your cousin on the throne.”

Mei nodded and Alphonse put his arm around her shoulders.

A revolt and being ostracized would be enough to drive any normal person away, but Riza knew those two were braver than most. There was still more. “Alphonse, what happened?”

He cleared his throat. “So Ling kept Mei on as a Minister, which made people angry because now she’s clanless. And then…” He puffed out his cheeks before rushing, “People have been saying he’s not choosing an Empress from the wives because he plans to get rid of all of them. People have proposed a lot of…” He looked at Mei and back up. “There are lots of rumours about why there are no kids. But the most popular one is that he just doesn’t like any of them. The wives. So somehow the logic goes…No wives?”

“And then he’ll just have one,” Mei said. “And she’ll be the Empress. And of course that’s not equality or in keeping with tradition, so people are furious.”

“But that’s not happening,” Riza clarified.

“No!” Alphonse said. “Not at all. But that’s what everyone has decided is happening, and they that idea was apparently put into Ling’s head by—”

“Me,” Mei finished. “I’m supposed to have convinced him of that. To get back at my clan, and also because I’m supposed to have been…” She reddened and laughed. “I mean, it’s so ridiculous. I’m next in line, technically. He put me there, and if I wanted to seize power I’d just kill him in his sleep, I wouldn't have to... But the clans say I’m—”

“She’s married to an Amestrian,” Alphonse finished.

Mei nodded. "That’s—I am."

Riza bit her lip. She was not naïve. She had suspected they were hiding something. Alphonse was still trying to protect his wife, but Riza knew how disgusting rumours could be.

“Ling's strengthening the alliance with Amestris, and the clans are worried because polygamy is outlawed here,” Alphonse said. “Some are concerned he’ll make cultural concessions to a foreign power, and all of that means we’re not exactly loved by the general population right now, so—” 

A commotion sounded in the main office. He had arrived.

“Alphonse,” Riza urged.

“We’ve been exiled,” he said.

She gasped. There was no time, no time at all. “You’ve been what?”

“He had to do it!” he said. “He’s not actually against us, but he has to protect his country and his position and—”

The door flew open and thudded against a file cabinet. The General, still in the suit he had worn to the party, marched through the doorway, fury etched into his brow and the set of his jaw. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” he shouted.

Riza jumped to her feet. She needed two more minutes, just two more minutes to speak with Alphonse and Mei and prepare them for the General’s rage. “Sir—”

“You send no word for months,” the General said and he marched toward his desk and jabbed a finger at Alphonse. “You have everyone scared out of their—”

“We’ve already had the parenting lecture,” Alphonse said.

The General pointed toward the ceiling. “What about the ‘shot out of the fucking sky’ lecture?”

“Not in those exact words,” Alphonse said. Then he bowed his head under the General’s glare. “Yes.”

“Great.” The General stalked to the other side of his desk and gripped the back of his chair before demanding, “What the hell is going on?”

“Sir,” she tried again, but he held up a hand to silence her.

Alphonse cracked his knuckles. “Well, you see, the Emperor has fifty wives—”

The General shook his head. “I don’t have time. Ten words or less.”

Alphonse looked at Riza and then at the General before saying, “We’ve been exiled.”

Riza tensed. It seemed the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, burned up by the simmering rage that pulsed in the General’s chest. She saw the General’s shoulders tightened, his head incline. She heard him say in a low, quiet voice, “What?”

Alphonse stepped forward and held up his hands. “It’s extremely complicated and messed up, and it’s not actually going to impact the alliance.”

Mei murmured, “Well, it might.” Alphonse shushed her with his hand, and she added, “But it won’t be his fault.”

“There’s a lot going on,” Alphonse said. “And—”

“You have ten seconds,” the General said in the same even tone, “to get out of my office. Ten seconds before I cremate you where you stand.” Riza ran toward him and grabbed his elbow. She did not think the General would kill Alphonse, and there was no use in making him listen to Alphonse, but his anger was boiling, and he needed to stop and think. He repeated, “Ten.”

Alphonse bounced on his heels and said with all deference, “General, I think if you just let me—“

“Nine!” the General’s voice thundered.

Alphonse grabbed Mei and bolted for the door. Riza left the General where he stood, knuckles white as he gripped the back of his chair, and followed the couple. 

She stopped in the doorway as Alphonse turned to look back at her, and she pointed to the telephone on her desk. “Call your brother,” she said. Then she stepped back into the General’s office and closed the door behind her. She leaned back with her hands still on the knob and watched him. He was so still and so tense, his entire body a bowstring ready to snap. “Sir.”

“Exiled?” he said. He continued, his voice rising, “Is he serious? How the hell—”

“Calm down, Sir.” How many times that day would she say that to him?

“I recommended him!” he shouted as he threw his arm toward the door.

“I know.” She marched to him and pointed a finger at his chest. “Calm down, and breathe. This solves nothing.”

He glared at her and chewed the inside of his cheek before grunting and yanking at his tie. He wrenched his arms from his suit jacket and tossed it onto his desk and threw himself into his chair. “I recommended him as interim ambassador,” he repeated. “And he has the gall to get himself exiled?” He unclasped his cufflinks and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Does he realize how this looks? Today of all days?”

She understood what he meant, but it seemed to her that Alphonse’s return, either before or after the announcement, would not have boded well for the campaign. “I don’t think the exact date matters, Sir.”

He winced and grabbed his right hand with his left. “That’s not comforting.” He started massaging his right hand. The nerves had never healed right—Doctor Marcoh had told them in that triage tent that even with a Philosopher’s Stone a complete restoration of damaged nerves was impossible—and sometimes his joints locked. It happened most often when he was tense. “In fact that makes it worse,” he said. “You know that makes it worse, right?”

She walked around the desk and leaned back against the drawers and took his hand. She kneaded the muscles in his palm, working from the scar to the tips of his fingers until, one by one, they relaxed.

“What the hell happened?” the General asked as he watched her work. “What did he tell you?”

She sighed. “It was very disjointed. But he said it was internal politics.”

“I thought he and the Emperor were friends,” he said. “I thought…” He turned his head to look out the window. “I thought a lot of things before today. I thought Alphonse was the responsible one. I thought Alphonse didn’t make enemies. I thought Alphonse could never be my least favourite Elric.”

She smiled and curved his fingers into his palm before releasing his hand and gripping the edge of the table she leaned against. He would never admit who his favourite Elric was, but she knew.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can’t cover this up. Half the city probably knows by now.”

She waited while he thought of how to spin the turn of events. He would figure it out. He always did. 

Minutes passed before he raked his hands through his hair and sighed. “Alright. Get him in here.” He gave her a tight smile. “I’m not going to kill him.”

She smiled back and pushed herself off the desk. “I never thought you would, Sir.”

Alphonse was at her desk when she walked into the main office. He had the receiver of her telephone pressed to his ear and he said, “Listen, Ed. You were a better alchemist than I am, and you couldn’t take Mustang in a fight.”

From his desk, Havoc jammed his finger toward Alphonse and mouthed, “What is happening?” She shook her head at him.

“I think it counts,” Alphonse said. He noticed Riza and she waved him over. He said in one breath, “I gotta go see you soon here’s Mei.” He shoved the receiver into Mei’s hand and hurried to Riza.

“Hi, Edward.” Mei said. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Is he really mad?” Alphonse asked.

“The General has a lot going on,” Riza told him.

“I know they impounded the aeroplane, but do you think we could at least get Xiao Mei back today?” He scratched his cheek. “That’s the little panda? They took her too.”

Riza sighed. “Get inside.”

As the door closed, she heard Mei say, “Maybe sometime tonight? We’ll probably have to get a train.”

The General was standing again, palms pressed against the top of his desk, and he pointed to a spot just before him. “Stand there.”

Alphonse did as he was told and rocked back on his heels, looking like a university student taken before the dean.

“Do not say a word,” the General said. Anger still laced his voice, but he kept his tone even. Riza walked to stand next to him and watch Alphonse on the other side of the desk. “First of all, you shouldn’t be here. You should have gone to Resembool first. Or, if you wanted to check in, you should have gone to Central. To your boss. Haugen?” His voice rose. “Haugen? Minister of State? Remember him?” When Alphonse did not respond, the General said, “Do you?”

Alphonse looked at the General and Riza, caught between the order to stay silent and the demand that he speak.

The General slammed his hands on the desk. “Answer me!”

Alphonse jumped and said, “Yes, Sir.”

“Do not talk!” the General said as he pointed a finger at Alphonse.

Riza cleared her throat. He was being overdramatic. He scoffed and gestured to Alphonse. She pursed her lips. He had told Alphonse to not speak. There was no reason to be mercurial. He threw his hands in the air in defeat, took a deep breath, and let it out.

“But you’re here,” the General said with a forced calm as they both turned back to the wide-eyed boy, “and there’s nothing we can do to change that.” He held up a finger. “So here’s what happened. We pulled you.”

Alphonse looked at Riza and she nodded. The General had a plan. He always had a plan.

“The desert conflict meant our diplomats were unsafe, and the Ministry opted to pull you out for your own protection.” He tapped the telephone on his desk. “I’m going to call the Führer and the Minister and get them on board, because at least this looks bad for their offices too.” He pointed to his door. “Now get out.”

“Alright,” Alphonse said, “but would—”

“Get out!”

Alphonse rushed for the door, and the General followed him.

“And go home!” the General called. Still standing in the open doorway, he turned to look at Riza. “Go with them. Take my automobile back to the training yard, get them on that aeroplane, and make sure they leave this city without destroying anything else.” He added when she nodded, “Meet me at the house. I’ll take a cab.”

She reached into the pocket of his suit jacket on the desk.

The General sighed and leaned against the door to keep it open. “I am never going to have sons.”

“Girls cause just as much trouble as boys do,” Riza said as she fished out his keys and as Havoc said at the same time, “You know you don’t really have control over that, Sir?”

The General snorted. “Really?” He turned to her and pointed at her nose when she tried to pass him and go into the main office. “If there’s ever a kid, and if it’s male, he’s—” He stalked into his office. “I’m putting him on the curb. In a box.” As the door closed, he called, “In a goddamn cardboard box!”

Havoc leaned back in his chair and rolled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “I’m confused,” he said to her. “Are you having the baby? Or was he just telling you to take a note?”

She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know, Havoc.” She did know, though. She also knew he would delight in any black-haired boy and would take more photographs of that boy than the child’s namesake took of his own daughter. At least, she assumed Maes would be the boy’s namesake. It was not a topic she and the General had ever discussed, because that black-haired boy did not exist, and he probably never would. Alphonse Elric did exist, and she hurried from the office to catch him before he left the building.

* * *

The party had vanished into thin air as a result of Mrs. Bauer’s magic. He had offered her the afternoon, and she had refused, saying he would skip dinner if she did. Then he had offered her the next morning, and she had refused again. Then she had disappeared into the kitchen to roast something that would prove her point. One day he would convince his housekeeper to take a vacation.

He looked at the clock on the mantle and poured two more fingers of brandy into the tumbler he had just drained. His hands had relaxed, and perhaps one more drink would remove all of his tension.

Hawkeye was late.

The sky was growing dark, and she should have arrived an hour earlier. Had something happened? Had Alphonse made it out alright?

The cover story he gave Alphonse, one he did not expect the boy to tell his brother, was only part of the problem. There was nothing to stop information from entering the borders and the media. He could imagine the headlines. “General Mustang Incompetent at Filling Federal Positions.” It could ruin him.

A knock sounded at the door, and he called to Mrs. Bauer that he would answer it. Hawkeye stood on the stoop, but instead of taking the automobile keys from her outstretched hand, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the parlour where he filled a second glass from the decanter.

“Here,” he said as he held out the glass. “Have a drink.”

She shook her head and dropped the keys onto the sideboard. “I don’t need one, Sir.”

He had finished two, but he said, “Well, I do.” He placed the tumbler back on the sideboard. “It’s there if you want it.” Then he walked toward the unlit fireplace, knowing she did want it and she would take it in the end. She was still in the dress and heels she had worn earlier, and she seemed exhausted. He supposed she had never needed a drink more.

When he reached the mantle, he turned back and saw that she had picked the tumbler off the table and was raising it to her lips. “A toast,” he said. “To the end before it begins.”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” she said.

“Isn’t it?” he asked. He took a long drink, no longer tasting the brandy, and said, “You took a cab to Headquarters earlier. Thirty-five hundred?”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “It was for work. I’m going to worry about it.”

Riza smiled and looked down. “I’ll fill out a reimbursement form tomorrow, then.”

He shook his head and took another drink. She would not, and she would not remind him that she needed to.

“What did the Führer say?” she asked.

“He agreed to the cover story,” he said as he met her gaze. “And Haugen has too. But we can’t stop everything.”

She nodded. “You’ll figure it out.” She took a sip and looked out the window that overlooked the street.

He drained his glass and set it on the mantle. The heat of the alcohol rose in him and pushed words he had never said before out of his mouth. “You should call him.” She looked at him again, a warning in her brown eyes, but the next sentences were falling off his tongue. “He always asks about you. You’re the only family he has left, and he just—”

“Stop,” she hissed.

“Riza,” he began.

“You don’t understand.”

He understood far more than she gave him credit for, though, and her words angered him. “I understand that he’s getting older and that he’s getting worried about his health. I understand—”

“You’re drunk,” she said, and he knew she offered him a way to walk back the conversation. He could blame everything on the liquor and not admit that these were his own thoughts coming uninhibited.

He took the chance. “Oh, I’m extremely drunk.”

She set her tumbler on the low table in front of the sofa, and he lowered himself into the cushions next to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he did understand. He had the unfortunate experience of being caught in the middle, but he understood her. He remembered the day she had told him by her father’s graveside that she had no family left, that her father had estranged the two of them from her mother’s parents, that she was alone in the world except for Roy. He could not imagine what it was like to discover as an adult that her mother’s father existed and knew who she was and where she had been her whole childhood. There was a pain there about which she had never told him. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t bring it up again.”

She reached to the side without looking and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, then she pulled away again.

He searched for something to say that could ease the tension he had caused. “Your birthday is coming soon,” he said. It was true. September was on its way. “What do you want?”

“I don’t need anything,” she said.

“How about a vase?” 

She looked at him.

“You’ve been using the same excuse for years,” he explained. “This way you can’t turn down my drunk flowers anymore.”

She laughed, a real laugh that made the corners of her eyes crinkle, and he forgot himself.

He breathed, “Why don’t you stay tonight?”

Her smile vanished, and he realized too late what he had said. He was drunk, far more drunk than he had realized. “There’s something for dinner,” he said as he waved toward the dining room. “And it’s late. I have a spare room.”

“I know,” she said. “I picked out the furniture.” She rose and smoothed her skirt. “I should go home. It’s not that late.”

He followed her to the door, having to concentrate on his footing more than he would have liked. “Are you sure you’re alright going home alone? Mrs. Bauer’s son picks her up every night, and I’m sure he’d give you a ride.”

She cleared her throat and shook her head. “The trams are still running. I’ll be fine.” Then she smiled at him. “Good night.”

That gentle smile was his undoing.

He brushed her hair to the side and leaned in to press his lips against her forehead. In that kiss, he tried to say everything he felt. How sorry he was that he had hurt her. How much he needed her. How much he wanted her. When he pulled away, she opened her eyes and her lips parted. He knew that if he tried to kiss her, to properly kiss her, she would let him. But he would not be satisfied with it, and he would not be able to stop himself from pulling her into his bedroom and laying her down and at last being with her. He would not be able to take that back, and he would not be able to reconstruct their wall. He was selfish, and he had already taken too many liberties that night. So he stepped back and said, “See you tomorrow.”

When she had gone, he went to the kitchen and told Mrs. Bauer that he was not hungry. He was feeling rather ill, and he thought he would go to bed early, and no, thank you, he did not need any tea. He climbed the stairs and shuffled into his bedroom and fell onto his bed.

He would regret not undressing in the morning, and he would regret drinking so much. In that moment, though, he did not care.

Riza had been right. She had picked out the furniture in the house, and she belonged in that house. She belonged next to him. She always had, and she always would.

He did not remember falling asleep, but when he awoke, the morning was streaming through the windows, and she was still gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Edward yawned and patted Yuriy’s head where it rested on his shoulder. It had taken hours of comforting and cuddling, but his son had worn himself out after screaming Edward and Winry awake before the sun had risen that morning. “At least someone got back to sleep.”

Winry cracked another egg into the skillet on the range and looked over her shoulder. “Poor little one.”

“Poor us,” Edward said. He leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table and yawned again.

She smiled and turned back to their breakfast. Cooking made her happy. She struggled a little at her stage with some things, like bending down to pull dishes from the oven, but she often refused any assistance. Still, he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want help with anything?”

“I’m sure,” she said. Over her head and through the window, he could see storm clouds rolling on the horizon. “Did you cut the fruit like I asked?”

Edward tipped the big ceramic bowl of grapes and apples and peaches and strawberries toward him. “You wanted this cut?”

She wheeled around, eyes wide and with an eggy spatula in one hand. “Ed—”

He grinned. “I’m kidding. It’s done.” It had been hard with Yuriy in one arm, but after two years of fatherhood he had mastered the art of doing everything with one hand.

She shook her head and turned away again. “I swear, Ed. I almost threw this at you.”

He stood, careful to not rouse his son, and brought the wet cutting board and knife to the sink next to the range. “It would have been like old times.”

When he reached for the faucet knob, she said, “Leave it. We’ll get it after.”

He leaned against the basin and rubbed Yuriy’s back. “Maybe we can convince Al and Mei to do clean up.”

Winry smiled and looked at Edward and their son. “Did he wake them too?”

He shook his head. They had been downstairs and heading out the door when he had come down for a glass of milk, which his ridiculous son seemed to enjoy almost as much as Winry did. “They were already up. They’re on a different schedule. It’s almost noon in Xing.” Wherever they had gone, he hoped they would be back before the downpour began. He looked back at Winry, who was still smiling at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, and she went back to preparing breakfast. “You’re just so happy he’s back.”

“Of course I am!” He had missed his brother. He had not heard from Alphonse in months, and he had been relieved when his brother had returned home in one piece. He was happy for more reasons than those, though. “Winry, for the first time in my life, Al’s the screw up.”

She clicked her tongue. “Ed!”

“Really! I think the last time he did something anywhere near this bad, he was three and he wet the bed.” Part of him wished he had been in that office to see Alphonse take the general’s ire for once. Another part wanted to deck Mustang because bullying Alphonse was Edward’s job as the older brother. “I still don’t understand why Al didn’t just kick his ass.”

“That’s easy for you to say, all the way out here in Resembool.” Winry wrapped a rag around the skillet handle and dumped the fried eggs onto a plate. “I just feel so sorry for Mei.”

“Yeah.” Edward continued rubbing Yuriy’s back while he thought. The story Alphonse and Mei had told them late the night before had been sobering. “You know, I’m pissed at Ling. He should have done something before it got this far.”

Winry shrugged and dropped two slices of bread in the electric toaster. “I’m sure he wanted to but couldn’t. It can’t be easy running a country.”

Edward sighed. Alphonse and Mei had defended Ling’s actions too, but he still felt Ling was responsible to some extent. “Maybe.” He wondered if Mustang would ever let things get so out of hand, if he would ever exile Edward. “I can’t believe people volunteer for it.”

“Good morning!” Alphonse called from the kitchen door as he and Mei walked in.

“Where have you two been?” Winry asked as she laid slices of ham on the skillet.

Alphonse sat at the table and Edward joined him while Mei joined Winry at the range.

“We took a walk around the village,” Alphonse said. “I can’t believe how much things have changed. We must have passed ten automobiles. It used to be all carts!”

Edward looked down at Yuriy’s face. He looked so peaceful. He would have to wake him for breakfast, but he could let his boy sleep a little longer. “And now every home has electric lighting and wireless radio.”

“Do you need help?” Mei asked Winry.

Edward looked across the table at his brother. Alphonse had hunched his shoulders and folded his hands tight in his lap, like he was trying to make himself smaller. Edward rolled his own shoulders back and gave him a pointed look, but Alphonse cocked his head.

“Oh, no,” Winry said. “I’m almost finished.”

“Al,” Edward told him, “you’re doing it again.”

“Oh.” Alphonse relaxed and smiled. “I don’t know how to stop.”

Edward nodded. Alphonse’s soul had not been bonded to the gigantic suit of armour for almost ten years, but some of the old habits had not left. Edward understood. He had gone more than half his life missing his left leg, but he still woke in the night with phantom pains.

“It’s just muscle memory,” Winry said. She used a fork to flip the ham slices. “You’ll lose it eventually.”

“How can I have muscle memory from a time when I didn’t have muscles?” he asked her.

Mei shrugged. “You know muscle memory isn’t really your muscles, Al.” Winry nodded as Mei continued, “It’s your brain.”

Alphonse pointed at her. “I didn’t have one of those either.”

“Still don’t,” Edward murmured.

Alphonse reached into the bowl on the table and threw a strawberry at Edward’s face.

“Behave, you two,” Winry said while Edward wiped juice from his cheek. 

Alphonse stifled a laugh and stood. “I’ll set the table.”

“Yes, thank you, Al,” Winry said as she rolled her eyes.

“I’ve never been very good at cooking,” Mei said. “But you seem to enjoy it.”

“I do!” Winry said. “I can teach you while you’re here.”

Alphonse pulled a stack of plates from a shelf and walked back to Edward and Yuriy. “What’s that construction going on by the watermill?”

Mei clapped her hands and grabbed the kettle off a burner. “I can make tea!”

Edward shrugged. “They were building an outdoor theatre, but stopped before they could finish the projector room.” Winry had volunteered him for the committee, saying he needed to reinsert himself in town life since he had settled down. He had fallen asleep in so many meetings and could not remember the particulars of any of the plans, but he had a rough idea of what had happened.

“So you could just sit on the hill and watch a picture?” Alphonse set down the last plate. “That sounds great! Why’d they stop?”

“Just on hold for now,” Edward said. Then, quieter and with a look at Winry’s back, he added, “Budget problems. It’s happening all over town.”

Alphonse nodded and sat next to him. “Are you two alright?”

They were not. Shop finances were in the red. His own savings were almost gone. He did not want Winry to overhear and start an argument, though, so he shook his head and whispered, “Not now.”

“You think later today I could take a look at your aeroplane?” Winry asked while Mei filled the kettle under the tap.

“When you’re small enough to fit in the engine, I’ll hold your feet,” Mei promised.

Winry laughed and gestured to her belly. “All the more reason to get this over with.”

“I’ll teach you to fly it, Winry,” Alphonse said.

Mei looked at him. “No, you won’t.” She repeated to Winry, “No, he won’t.”

Winry looked between Alphonse and Mei while he focused on the wood grain in the table and she put the kettle on a burner. “What’s wrong?”

“Ling gave us two,” Mei said.

Edward grinned and held the back of Yuriy’s head as he fussed in his sleep. He turned to Alphonse in glee and said, “Where’s the other one?”

“Malfunction,” Alphonse said while at the same time Mei said, “Alphonse crashed it.” Alphonse stuck his tongue out at her.

Edward cackled and slapped his hand on the table, but Yuriy whimpered, so he reigned in his laughter and shushed the toddler.

Alphonse scowled. “I’d like to see you fly an aeroplane.”

“I don’t plan to try,” Edward said, “which makes me the smart one.” Alphonse threw another strawberry at him and he dodged it. “But you have two massive screw-ups on your record—”

“Are we comparing scores, Ed?” Alphonse asked with a smile. “Because I’m still winning.”

Edward grinned and shrugged. “That depends on your perspective.”

Alphonse launched a grape at him, but Edward was too slow in dodging and it hit Yuriy on the head. The boy wailed in protest and Edward bounced him in his arms while he laughed in astonishment and Winry said, “Don’t hit my son!”

Mei ran to the table and scooped Yuriy into her arms. “Oh, come here. Did mean Uncle Alphonse throw fruit at you?”

“Hey!” Alphonse said.

“You can come with me,” Mei continued. “We’ll go meet a panda.” She winked at Winry and left the kitchen.

Edward flashed three fingers at Alphonse, who threw his arms in the air and yelled, “Oh, come on!” Keeping score was fun, now that there was a score to keep.

Winry shook her head and dumped the fried ham onto the plate with the eggs. “I always think that being apart for so long will make your differences more obvious.” She pulled jars of marmalade from a shelf. “But the opposite happens.” One of the jars slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, splattering sweet orange preserves on the planks and lower cabinets. “Oh!” she cried as she doubled over and grabbed her stomach.

Edward and Alphonse jumped up.

“Are you alright?” Alphonse asked while Edward said, “Is it starting?”

She shook her head and reached for a rag, but Alphonse waved her away and insisted he could clean the mess. “I just need to walk around a bit,” she said. She took a few steps toward Edward and he caught her hand. “It’s a false alarm.

Edward nodded, but his heart pounded hard in his chest. “I’ll get you some water.” The baby was not due for another week at least, the doctor had said. It could come sooner, he knew, but he had also learned with Yuriy to not panic during early contractions. Winry had been having them all week. “You want it cold?”

She nodded, then she gasped and tightened her grip on his hand. “Oh, no. Ed, this is real.”

Tingling shot down his arms. “Are you sure?”

“My water just broke.”

Edward took a deep breath and looked at Alphonse, who had stopped scraping broken glass off the floor. “Leave that,” he said, “and call Doctor Maller. His number is on the board.” The trip from town was an easy one, but he would feel more at ease if the doctor could arrive before the rain did. Alphonse ran to the telephone and Edward held Winry’s shoulders and said, “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

She grabbed his wrist. “I need you—” She moaned and bowed her head while thunder rumbled in the distance.

He bent down. “What? What do you need?”

“Ed, get out of my face,” she groaned, and then she shouted, “Get out of my face!”

Edward jumped back and held up his hands in surrender. He had been here before, and every instinct told him to hold onto her, but he knew it was better to just give Winry whatever she wanted.

She pointed toward Alphonse, who was speaking into the telephone on the wall. “Go stand over there!”

His hands shook and his limbs felt loose and unsteady, but he did as she said. Alphonse covered the receiver with one hand and whispered, “Ten-thousand and one, you.”

Edward faked a laugh and glared at his brother.

Alphonse grinned. “Thank you, Doctor.” He hung up the telephone and said, “He’s on his way.”

Winry nodded and lowered herself into a chair, her breathing evening as the contraction passed. She waved Edward over. “Ed, come back.” He sat next to her, and she took his hand again. She breathed in and out. “When he gets here, I want you with me. Like last time.”

Alphonse moved behind them, gathering the forgotten breakfast and locking plates in the refrigerator.

Edward remembered the last time well. The screaming and swearing and her punishing grip. “Last time you almost broke my hand.”

She scowled. “So I’ll make you a new one.”

Mei appeared in the doorway, balancing Yuriy on one hip as he reached for the black and white “kitty” cowering on her other shoulder. “I heard shouting. Is it coming?”

Winry nodded. “Please keep watching him.” She closed her eyes as she tried to focus on deep breathing.

Alphonse wiped his hands on his trousers. “Anything else we can do?”

Edward looked at them. “Go pull out some towels. We want to be ready.”

When they had left, Winry tightened her hold on him. “Don’t go.”

“I won’t,” he said. He would not leave. He would not miss the birth of his child. The kettle screamed on the range and he jumped. “But I’m going to get that.”

She nodded.

He walked to the range and turned off the burner. The contractions would grow worse and more frequent. He hoped that labour would not take as long as it had the last time, for Winry’s sake. She had been bedridden and in pain for almost nineteen hours.

The telephone rang.

He looked at Winry. His heart had not slowed. “It might be the doctor.” She nodded again, and he picked up the receiver. “Hello?” he said. Winry grimaced and moaned as she bent over again.

“Fullmetal,” said the arrogant voice on the other end. “Did your brother—”

“No offense, General,” Edward said, and he meant it, “but you have really shitty timing.” Then he slammed the receiver down and ran back to his wife’s side.

* * *

Mustang pulled the receiver from his ear and stared at it as if it could tell him what had just happened. All he had wanted was to know how Alphonse Elric had been when he had arrived in Resembool the day before—it was a matter of great career importance to him, after all. What had he done to deserve such treatment?

He looked up when his office door opened and Hawkeye walked in with a stack of papers in her arms. “Fullmetal hung up on me.”

She stopped before his desk. “Sir?”

“That little asshole just hung up on me.” He slammed the receiver into the cradle and flexed his fingers.

Hawkeye set some papers down and added a few envelopes from the corner of his desk to her pile. “He’s taller than you are now, Sir.”

He scoffed. “No, he’s not.” Edward was not taller than he was—at least, not by a significant amount. “I didn’t mean it literally, anyway.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, and he turned to look at the oncoming storm. It would be the last one of the season, a torrential downpour that would wash away the summer heat, and when the rain ceased, autumn would come. He hated the late summer storms and how they made the East so wet.

“What did he say?” she asked.

He shrugged and looked back at her. “Something about bad timing, and then he was gone.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “It must be the baby.”

He had not considered that, but it made sense. His fingers tapped out an unsteady rhythm on his desk. “Must be.” He could check in the next day if Edward had forgotten to return the call, and he would forget. He imagined Edward was preoccupied and would be for some time. The new Elric had not even been born and had already managed to disrupt Mustang’s day.

“Anything else for the morning post, Sir?”

“Ah.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of quarterly performance reviews and handed them to her. “Drop these with human resources on your way.”

She nodded. “Of course, Sir.” She would not look at them. She had no need to.

He stood to walk her to the door, but he stopped with his hand on the knob. “About last night, I’m—”

“Sir, no,” she said, cutting off his own apology with the start of her own. “I’m—” She shook her head and said, “It wasn’t wholly your fault.”

He smiled. “But it was.” It would always be his fault. The law said the superior would be held responsible for any improper fraternization, and for all the laws they had broken, that one held the most risk. It would be easy to detect, and any suspicion would lead to an inquiry. One right question and one wrong answer would expose everything they had done over the past fifteen years.

He had to be better. He had to step back and be more formal, distant, even, for both their sakes.

“I think the best thing to do about it,” she said, “is to get back to work.” 

Then she was gone.

He leaned his head against the door. Get back to work. He knew he should, but he had a meeting in a few minutes, and he did not have time to start something before it. Besides, he did not think he could concentrate on anything while his mind kept returning to possible developments in Resembool and to Edward.

Edward, who had given up alchemy for his brother’s life and had somehow also gained a family, a wife, two children, and everything.

“That’s not how equivalent exchange is supposed to work,” he muttered. He threw open the door and strode into the office. “How’s the news this morning, Fuery?”

“Slow, Sir,” Fuery called from his desk. As usual, he squatted in his chair and bent over a transmitter. Fuery had long ago been commissioned and appointed as the head of communications at Headquarters, but Mustang liked having him close. He wanted to be the first to hear if anything important happened. He could not abide couriers.

“Good,” he said, and Fuery pulled his headphones back over his ears.

The door opened and his campaign scheduler, smiling and alone, walked in.

“Ah, Neumann,” Mustang smiled. Charlie would not be far behind, and then they could begin. He was grateful that election regulations, either by oversight or intention, had not excluded political or military buildings as meeting places, even if they had excluded active employees or subordinates from working on the campaign.

“Good morning, Sir,” Neumann said as he gave Mustang a firm handshake. “I tried to say something to Miss Hawkeye when I passed her in the hall, but I don’t think she heard.”

That sounded like Hawkeye. She could block out the world when she was focused on a task. Something about the comment made him uneasy, though.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Neumann,” Havoc said from his desk. “She’ll be back and you’ll get another shot.”

Breda snickered and Mustang tensed. He did not like what Havoc implied.

Neumann’s smile faltered, and then he forced it back into place. “Charlie said he won’t be able to make it. Something with advertising came up.”

Mustang wondered if it were a good thing or not that he would be in a scheduling meeting without his manager. Charlie always had something to say, but Mustang was not always pleased to hear it. “Is he still on about the chewing gum thing?” One of Charlie's newer ideas was putting slogans and advertisemnets on wrappers. Mustang did not want people tacking used gum to his picture before they threw it in the bin. It was bad enough having his picture in the newspapers that were then being used to wrap fish and raw meat. He did not want people tacking used gum to his picture before they threw it in the bin. He sighed and shook his head and pointed to his office. “Go in and get yourself settled.”

When Neumann had gone, Mustang glared at Breda and Havoc. “Don’t do that.”

Havoc looked up from a report he was typing. “Why? He doesn’t have a chance in hell.”

Breda guffawed and crossed his arms. “I doubt she’s even noticed he’s hitting on her.”

“She hasn’t noticed,” Mustang said, his temperature rising, “because he’s not hitting on her. He’s just being kind and polite. You two should try it sometime.”

Havoc and Breda burst into laughter, and Fuery lowered his headphones and asked what he had missed, which made them laugh harder.

Mustang shook his head and turned toward his door. “Fuery, interrupt me if anything happens.” Then he stormed back into his office.

Neumann had made himself at home on a sofa and had spread out papers and files on the low table before him. “I wanted to first discuss a schedule for next month,” he said as Mustang sat next to him. He passed Mustang a page with enough lines and dates and time stamps to make Mustang’s head spin. “There are some gaps, but we can fill them easily. Roth got a lot of calls from Central-based papers and radio stations following the announcement yesterday.” He tapped a date in the second week of the month. “We think it’ll be a good idea to travel to Central early, ahead of the Cretan ambassador’s welcome party, if you can manage it.”

Mustang looked over the rest of the documents on the table. There were proposed travel plans to the West, the North, and the South for the coming months.

“It’s a popular election,” Neumann explained, “so we’re not concerned with swinging districts like they have to do in Creta or Elcana, but it’s still a good idea to get people in other regions excited so they show up to the polls.”

Mustang nodded. “I’m familiar.”

Neumann chuckled. “Of course, Sir. Charlie gave me a sort of script, though.”

Mustang snorted. That was Charlie. He motioned for Neumann to continue.

“The Central Times has been running pieces on all candidates who have announced,” he said as he uncapped a fountain pen and pointed to a time slot early in the month where he had scratched in a note about an interview. “Roth thought this date might work, but I wanted to confirm. They printed Richard Kaufman’s yesterday.”

That was unfortunate timing, but if what Neumann was telling him was true, then the story had not overshadowed his own announcement. “How was it?”

Neumann dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded clipping. “Charlie wanted me to bring it so you can read for yourself.”

Mustang unfolded the article. He had seen Richard Kaufman in pictures, of course, but for the first time he took a moment to study him. He was older than Mustang, perhaps in his fifties, but there was a look in his eye that said he was nowhere near retiring from politics. He posed with his hand on the shoulder of a seated woman Mustang assumed was Mrs. Kaufman. Indeed, there was a short piece below that called her a potential future first lady and delved into her own political and philanthropic work. He would read both articles later, but as he looked back at their photograph, at their confidence and obvious partnership, he understood what his campaign team had meant when they had approached him about the spouse question.

“Charlie and Roth will go over possible questions and answers with you before the interview.” 

Mustang nodded. He had expected his manager and press secretary would be involved in all activities involving papers and radios. 

Neumann rubbed his hands together. “Do you know when Miss Hawkeye will be back? Only, I wanted to speak with her about your work schedule and figure out what important events you have coming up that we can use.”

The question irked him, and he folded the article and shoved it in his pocket and asked, “Isn’t that illegal?” Then he cleared his throat and said, “I can’t exactly campaign during a strategy meeting.”

Neumann smiled and said in a gentle voice, “It’s an election, Sir. Even when you’re not campaigning, you’re campaigning.”

Mustang leaned back and tried to imagine the next year with his entire life on display. He thought he had known, but looking at time tables and interviews had made the concept real. His heartbeat thrummed in his fingertips and adrenaline burned through his veins and he grinned. “Were Parliament elections always like this?”

Neumann shrugged. “More or less.” He had worked a number of campaigns before Charlie had brought him in to be Mustang’s scheduler. “I think everyone is stressed and the spotlight is brighter because this election is bigger. Obviously.” He picked up the schedule again. “The ambassador’s welcome party at the end of the month will be a nice opportunity to connect with a few more donors and secure some endorsements. Just remember—”

“Not the Führer,” Mustang finished. Charlie had drilled that into his head.

“Exactly,” Neumann said. “Nothing compromises a new democracy like nepotism.”

Mustang nodded. It was odd. He needed connections to win, but the wrong kind of connection could ruin him.

“Anyway,” Neumann continued, “Charlie said your message on international relations is strong, but you need to really take an open stand against isolationism. Make sure you’re seen speaking to as many foreign dignitaries as possible.” He waved a hand. “He’ll tell you all of this again.”

Mustang nodded. “At great length and a high volume.”

Neumann smiled at the joke. “Well, that’s Charlie.” He tapped his pen against his leg. “That one reporter called yesterday. Geneva Menke. She’s suddenly free for an interview.”

Mustang scoffed. He had predicted her availability. “Wonders never cease.” He looked down at the schedule. “When will you set that up? I don’t see it on here.”

Neumann hummed in thought, then he said, “If I may, Sir?” When Mustang nodded, he said, “I think you can do better.” He pointed to the schedule again. “The Central Times called us, Sir. They called us begging to run a story on you. You don’t need to ask reporters from rags anymore.” He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “No offense to Miss Menke, but you can be above tabloid publicity now. You should be.”

Mustang raised an eyebrow. “Charlie agrees?”

“Charlie said all press is good press,” Neumann said, choosing each word, “but he would rather make her wait, since we reached out first.” He laughed. “It doesn’t look good at this stage if interviews aren’t earned. It makes you look desperate.”

That had not been the opinion they had given Mustang when he had first suggested meeting with her. Their earlier excitement had turned into reluctance. “And that’s changed since we made the call?”

Neumann nodded. “Timing is everything, Sir.”

The door opened and Hawkeye walked in with some large envelopes. Neumann jumped to his feet and wiped his hands on his trouser legs. She stopped, surprised, because she rarely pulled rank in the office and as a consequence no one had stood when she entered a room in a long time.

“Hello, Miss Hawkeye,” Neumann said with a lopsided smile.

“Hawkeye,” Mustang said, because he was annoyed by Neumann’s eagerness and by the fact that Breda and Havoc—Havoc!—had noticed before Mustang had. “You’ll be pleased to know I’m not doing the gossip column.” She dated other men, he knew, just as he dated other women, though his relationships were more frequent and often with a different agenda. He had never expected her to wait, but it had been easier to think about when those men had been nameless and faceless. As long as he did not know who they were, they would leave in the end.

She smiled at Neumann first, and Mustang took a breath. “Hello, Mr. Neumann.” Then she looked at Mustang and said in a sharper tone, “That’s good.”

“How are you today?” Neumann asked. He gestured toward her. “You seem well.”

“She always does,” Mustang said from his seat. 

Hawkeye shot him a look that told him she knew what was going on, and she was not impressed by his maturity. “I am well,” she said.

He remembered his earlier decision to be more professional, to back off. He stood and held out a hand to take the envelopes from her. “I can—”

“Sir!” Fuery said as he threw open the door. His eyes were wide and his face pale. “You said to interrupt. You need to hear this.”

Mustang tossed the envelopes onto his desk and followed Fuery into the office where the other officers were already still as they listened to a man speaking on the radio.

“—Taking up the fight for our country’s future,” the voice said as Mustang approached the receiver on Fuery’s desk. “We are the Amestrian Freedom Army—”

“Any group with the word ‘freedom’ in the name usually fights for anything but,” Havoc said.

“Hush,” Hawkeye said.

Mustang looked back at her. She stood behind him, like always, and her soft brown eyes him that she did not care about his pettiness, not anymore. But Neumann was there too, and he was watching her, and Mustang could not bear to see it. So he turned back to Fuery and said, “When did this start?”

“Just now, Sir.” Feury pointed to the dial. “But look. They’re overriding the signal.”

Mustang looked at the number and saw the radio was tuned to a military communications channel. “How is this possible?”

Fuery took a deep breath. “Well, it’s easy, Sir. They just need a stronger signal. Anyone with a powerful transmitter can do it.”

“—Years we have been watching, learning, waiting,” the man continued. “Your government has been lying to you, and the evidence—”

“Damn propagandists,” Mustang said. “We have to find them and shut them down.” He marched toward Havoc and Breda’s desks. “Havoc, call your men. Have them start searching the city.” Havoc acknowledged the order and spun the rotor on his telephone. Mustang turned to Breda and said, “Breda, what can—”

“Sir!” Neumann said, and Mustang turned around. Neumann was looking at him and not at Hawkeye, who was still bent over the receiver and speaking to Fuery in a quiet voice. “What if the news picks this up?”

Mustang frowned. The news picking this up was what he meant to prevent. He heard raindrops beginning to hit the glass window behind him.

“I mean,” Neumann said, “what if they say, well—” He looked at Hawkeye, who paid him no mind, and then back at Mustang. “It won’t look great if people say you’re silencing free speech.”

Mustang took a breath. While the new constitution guaranteed free press and free speech and even against the government, an act formerly considered treason, he considered that amendment irrelevant. “Free speech be damned. They’re jamming a signal and broadcasting outside the independent frequencies without a license.” He looked back at Breda and Havoc. “Those are crimes. The law isn’t on their side.” He watched through the windows as the rain fell harder. The sky had darkened to a deep, cold grey.

Breda, anticipating the order, had dialed his own telephone and was speaking to the Lieutenants under him.

The man on the radio continued. “When Führer Bradley was killed—”

“Sir,” Havoc said as he pulled the receiver from his face, “they want to know what they’re looking for.”

Mustang turned back to Fuery, who shook his head and said, “I don’t know, Sir.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Mustang barked. “Radio towers that weren’t there before! Antennae or something! Large pieces of equipment!”

“Not necessarily, Sir,” Fuery said while the radio recounted the publicized death of Führer Bradley. “The size doesn’t matter.” He twisted the cord of his headset around his wrist. “It can be powerful without being big.”

“That’s not phallic,” Havoc said.

Hawkeye looked up. “Not an appropriate time, Captain.” Then she bent over the receiver again as if she could will the speaker’s name to appear on the dials.

“—We were promised his vision for the future of this country would continue. But the opposite has happened—”

Mustang walked back to Fuery. “Well the signal should be stronger the closer—” He stopped when the voice cut off and then started again.

“—Make friends with aggressors and enemies. We rebuild Ishval—” It cut out. Then the voice came in again. “—Violation of his extermination orders. We overturn—” When it cut out that time, he noticed Hawkeye’s hand on the dial, turning it one tiny line at a time. “—Stable government in favour of uncertainty—Reject our national strength—”

He struggled to find his voice as the knob turned from the numbers on the left to those on the right. The speaker continued listing the errors of the current government, unperturbed by the rain that pelted the windows and the thunder that boomed outside. “How many channels is this on?” He looked at Fuery. “This can’t be done with one transmitter.”

Fuery shook his head. “No, Sir. It’s impossible.” He moved to his transmitter and Hawkeye stepped back to give him room. “You need to tune them to specific frequencies—”

Mustang snapped and pointed at him. “That’s actually helpful. How many would they need? Dozens?”

Fuery shook his head. “To effectively interfere with every channel, Sir, they’d need several hundred.”

Mustang nodded, and lightning flashed, making the lights flicker and the voice on the radio stop and start.

“The coup succeeded,” said the man, and everyone in the office held their breath. “Those who rule painted the defenders of our government as villains—”

“There aren’t a lot of places that can hold that many high-powered transmitters, right?” That would narrow down the buildings they had to search.

Fuery shook his head. “Not…” He puffed out his cheeks and then rushed, “They could be broadcasting from a single location, using receivers to pick up the sound, and retransmitting from different locations.”

“Or they could be playing records,” Breda said. He and Havoc sat unmoving, receivers in hand, but Mustang still did not know what to tell them yet. What did they need to look for?

“There would be delays. The channels would not be in sync either way.” Mustang pointed to Fuery. “See if there’s a channel slightly ahead of the rest.” He began to pace. The thought that the transmitters could be spread out was aggravating. If the broadcast were not localized and was instead spread across several buildings in the city, the search would be harder. They could find the origin. If they knew how, they might be able to know where—He stopped as something new occurred to him. “What’s the chance this is happening nation-wide?”

Hawkeye bent over Fuery’s shoulder. “Check the national broadcast channels first.”

Fuery nodded and turned the dial to a number in the range used by national news and entertainment channels.

“—Murdered Führer Bradley to seize his power and destroy our country,” the man said, unfazed by the change in frequency. “Citizens of Amestris, what you believe is a lie.”

Mustang ran a hand through his hair. “Shit.”

“It doesn’t mean anything!” Fuery said. “They don’t have to jam the signals coming from national broadcasting stations. They just need a stronger signal that the receivers will pick up instead. It could still be local.”

“—Reality of this conspiracy was hidden by everything you trust—”

Mustang rubbed at the stiffness in his jaw. He couldn’t think. There were too many questions and not enough answers to give him a location.

Lightning cracked, and thunder came not far behind, and Hawkeye’s telephone rang. She ran to her desk.

“—Your gut will tell you the truth about that day, about how the coup was not stopped by those who hold power now, but planned by them.”

Hawkeye picked up her receiver. “General Mustang’s office.” 

“Führer Grumman,” the man said, confirming Mustang’s suspicion that the broadcaster had made his voice heard in Central, “did you think no one was watching?”

Hawkeye flinched and said, “Just one moment, Ma’am.”

“General Mustang,” the man continued, and Mustang held his breath, “did you think no one was paying attention?”

“Sir,” Hawkeye said. “It’s—”

“General Armstrong,” the man finished for her, “did you think no one would realize?” 

“What did she say?” he asked, though he could already guess. How many people were in this so-called army? How far could they spread themselves?

The man said, “The citizens of this country will not be ruled by illegitimacy.”

Hawkeye closed her eyes tight. “She asked, ‘What the hell is going on, Mustang,’ and, ‘Are you hearing this?’” She opened her eyes and added, “Sir.”

He looked at Fuery and breathed, “How?”

Fuery swallowed. “It could be thousands of transmitters across the country, or a few very high-powered short-wave—”

“So what you’re telling me,” Mustang said, his voice rising, “is that they could be everywhere, or they could be in one spot anywhere?”

“We are coming,” the man on the radio promised.

His team looked at him, waiting for him to tell them what to do. He thought about how he would accomplish the same feat, and then he knew. “Tell them,” he said to Breda and Havoc, “to start with large, abandoned spaces. Warehouses. Gutted buildings. Check in if they find nothing.” They would find nothing in those places, because he knew how he would do it. He knew what steps he would take. Still, there was a chance these hijackers would leave some clues behind, and he needed to give the appearance of acting to those who were not in the room. Enlisted personnel at least had to believe he was in charge.

“We will return our nation to what it was and what it should be,” the man said, and Mustang wished more than ever that he could send his alchemy careening down radio waves. If Fullmetal could figure out how to do that, he would be impressed. Then, the man finished. “An Amestrian future for an Amestrian people.” The radio went quiet.

The silence was broken only by the rain and Hawkeye’s voice hitching. “He’ll have to call you back, Ma’am,” she whispered before returning the receiver to its cradle.

He had given his orders, he had listened through to the end, and all he could do was wait for the broadcasters to prove his hypothesis.

Another voice on the radio cleared his throat. “Well, Freddie,” he said, and Mustang knew the illegal transmitters had been turned off and the original broadcasting stations had been given control again. “I think…”

“We don’t get something like this every day,” another man laughed.

“No we don’t,” the first agreed. “Let’s get back to our regular schedule. Coming up we have the next part of Across the Aerugan Sea, a drama by Phyllis Mann. If you missed the last episode—”

“Turn it off,” Mustang said.

The speaker sputtered as Fuery plugged in his headset so he could still listen for anything else without disturbing the room. Mustang pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and watched the sparks of colour against inky blackness like fireworks.

“Did they just say that?” Havoc asked, referring to the final statement. Mustang had heard it, and he had recognized it from that little slip of paper Fullmetal had found at the site of the explosion. He understood the significance.

“There’s no way someone could buy and set up enough high-powered transmitters to do something like this,” Breda said, his mind already on investigating through backchannels. “Not without being detected. Not that many places sell them, so they’d be buying several at once, and someone would be wondering what they were doing. We can go to shop owners and ask if they—”

“You don’t need to buy them,” Mustang said, because he knew. He could be wrong, but he wasn’t. “You just need to know how they work. You just need raw materials.” He let his hands fall and opened his eyes.

“You’re suggesting a team of alchemists did this,” Hawkeye confirmed.

He nodded. “They could pull elements and compounds from the cement floor of a basement. And if they did, and if they’re smart, they’d deconstruct everything immediately after. Put the floor back together.” He leaned against Fuery’s desk and let his head drop back so he could stare at the ceiling. “They’re already gone.”

“Skilled, pro-Bradley alchemists,” Breda said. “It’s a start. There can’t be too many of those.”

“And they’re not smart,” Neumann said, and Mustang looked at him. He had almost forgotten Neumann was there. “They’re crazy. And crazy won’t convince anyone.”

“They’re also right,” Mustang said. “Or close to it. It’s easy as hell to figure out what happened to the old regime if you look hard enough.”

“Or,” Breda said as he nodded at Havoc, “maybe someone talked.”

Havoc scoffed. “Why did you look at me when you said that?”

“I didn’t!” Breda said. “Not like that!”

“Captains,” Hawkeye said. “Please.”

Mustang tried to breathe in deep. Pro-Bradley alchemists would be the best place to start, but they would have waited to make themselves known. Alchemists hated the military state on principle, as he was well aware. Still, someone may have heard about them.

“But everyone else will think they’re insane,” Neumann told him. “That’s what counts.”

A “freedom army” large enough to interfere with every major frequency nation-wide? Something on that scale could not have stayed hidden. There would have been rumblings of that forming in the underground.

He straightened and walked out the door before someone could say anything else to him.

Vanessa, one of his aunt’s former girls, had set up her own establishment in East City. It was too early in the day to visit without starting rumours of alcoholism and other addictions, but it had been a while since he had sent a message to Madam Christmas. If he was lucky, all the news would be focusing on the mass signal interruption anyway.

“Sir!” Hawkeye called behind him, and he stopped walking down the hall to wait for her while she caught up with him.

Instead of convincing him to turn around and go back to the office, she held out an umbrella.

He took it and asked, “Why does it feel like everything is happening now?”

“Because it is, Sir,” she said. “And because it matters more.”

He nodded and looked down the hall toward the main doors. They were alone. All other personnel were probably gathered around radios and whispering behind doors. He did not blame them. “I’m taking the rest of the day.” He was taking the entire day, really. 

“Sir,” she said. “Don’t you think she would have already told you if she had heard anything?”

He smiled, because of course she knew. She always knew what he was thinking, what he was going to do next. “I need her to start looking, then. I’m sure she already has, but—” He met her eyes, and he saw that she too was unsure and frightened. Their country’s entire communication system had been hijacked, and those responsible had all but claimed a bombing. He did not know what moves to make or who the other players were or where the pieces lay. He could not even see the board. Yet they had given him the objective. He took a deep breath. “Like I said, I might not be back today, so I need you to hold things down.” She could field telephone calls from Central or from General Armstrong in the North, and he could deal with them the next day. When she nodded, he added, “What would I be without you?”

She looked at the umbrella in his hand and said, “Extremely wet, Sir.”

He sighed, glad that in the midst of everything she still knew how to make a joke, and pointed at her. “Just so we’re clear, I know what you mean by that. And I don’t appreciate it.” 

She smiled and the corners of her eyes crinkled. He almost said something else, something less sarcastic, but a door down the hall opened and he heard voices. So instead he thanked her for the umbrella, asked her to tell Neumann he had gone, and left her there.

He pushed open the main doors and watched the rain fall in sheets. For once, he wanted to stand in it, to let the morning run off of him and flow down a storm drain and into the Marl River, running out of town and far, far away. He knew that was impossible, though. He had long ago chosen a greater responsibility that made putting off national security threats unconscionable. So he opened the umbrella and descended the steps to the street where he parked his automobile every morning. As he drove, his pulse raced and his chest felt light and he remembered that it wasn’t the first game he had played against an unknowable opponent with a despicable plan for the country.

He had won the last game. He would win at the new one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to write author's notes, and I'm a mess. Here it goes.
> 
> I don't always have consistent access to this site. VPNs go down sometimes (and when they do it's for a while), this site sometimes flickers in accessibility like the government can't decide if it should be blocked or not, and restrictions are tightening in light of these THINGS happening on the other side of Mirs Bay.
> 
> That being said, I can't always respond to reviews if you leave them. I would if I could. But know that I appreciate every one of them and each of you who leaves one. Y'all are keeping me going.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Thank you for reviewing.


	5. Chapter 5

The rain continued to beat the pavement. The storm would continue for a few more days before letting up, and he was ready for it to end. He could not stand how water streamed down the windshield and obscured the road, how the gutters flooded and the draining water came up almost to the tops of his boots, how the wind howled and pushed at him, how the rain fell from all different directions and the umbrella did nothing to keep him dry. Newspapers and radio hosts had already called the storm the worst since the turn of the century, and that morning they had noted that public transportation might close due to flooding.

The notices had been short though, as all had been concerned with a very different story. Every paper ran a version of the same headline, and every radio station had been discussing the pirate broadcast. The day before, no one had seemed able to talk about anything else.

He could not blame them. He had not been able to sleep for thinking about it. The twisted logic, the fact that simple observation had brought them so close to the truth, the personal address at the end. He had spent the whole day calling in overdue favours and asking for new ones, trying to find the one loose thread in his careful web of lies before someone tugged too hard and everything he had worked for unraveled.

He locked his automobile and began the trek to the main doors of Eastern Headquarters. At one point in the past, horses and carriages had trotted up the lime avenue to the foot of the massive stone staircase, but since the military’s repurposing of the palace, no vehicles were allowed past the gate at the road.

He was passing the guardhouse when one of the security personnel stepped in his path and said, “Identification badge, Sir.”

Mustang stopped and stared at the man before asking, “What?”

The soldier—his insignia declared him a sergeant—looked to the side and then back at Mustang. “I need to see your identification badge, Sir. New policy.” He cleared his throat and repeated, “Sir.”

Mustang frowned. Did the sergeant not know who he was? What sort of new policy had been implemented without his knowledge? “I’m an exception,” he said as he tried to push past the sergeant, who blocked him again.

“Major Hawkeye said you’d say that, Sir,” the sergeant said, confirming that he did know who Mustang was and from whom the new policy had come. “She also said no exceptions, and she was clear that it includes you, Sir.”

Mustang took a deep breath. “I bet she did.” He would speak to her when he saw her, because it was ridiculous that he would need to show identification to get into the building. He ran the place. He would always be the exception. He dug into his pocket for his wallet, but stopped when he heard a voice behind him call, “General Mustang!”

He turned and saw a pretty young woman running through the downpour with a broken umbrella over her head. She had brown hair cut to just below her shoulders and big, blue eyes, and she looked just like the sort of woman he would know, but her face was unfamiliar to him. Perhaps she was one of Vanessa’s girls.

“General, Sir,” she said as she stopped in front of him, “I wondered if I might have a moment of your time.” She stuck out a hand, and he halted his search for his wallet to shake it. “I’m Geneva Menke from the Eastern Review.” The reporter, the one who had snubbed him, the one Neumann had told him to avoid. He pulled back, regretting his friendliness, and resumed searching his overcoat pockets. “I’ve tried calling,” she said.

“I’ve been told,” he replied. He flipped his wallet open, but his identification badge was not inside. He patted his breast pocket.

“Sir,” she continued, “I just want to ask you some questions.”

He hummed and jammed his hand into his pants pockets. The last time he had even seen his badge was the day he had received his new one, and he could not remember which pocket of which standard-issue uniform piece he had dropped it into. “That’s what people in your line of work do.”

“It won’t take long,” she pressed. “I was wondering about your immigration policies in light of the sudden border shutdowns in the East—”

There it was, shoved into the inside pocket of his coat. “That’s your normal beat, is it?” 

He expected the gossip columnist to look abashed, but she squared her shoulders and looked at him in a way that reminded him of Edward Elric. “Not yet, Sir,” Miss Menke said. “But if you could give me a few minutes…” She cleared her throat. “I listened to your speech on the radio two days ago. Everyone is focusing on economics and international relations for the election, or they’re talking about what happened yesterday.”

The mention of the disturbing hijacking made him remember himself, and he flashed his badge at the sergeant, who nodded and stepped aside.

“You didn’t speak long on social policy, Sir,” Miss Menke rushed as he turned away from her. “But it matters and people will want to hear what you have to say, Sir.” He stopped and looked back at her as she said, “Fifteen minutes, Sir. That’s all I want.” 

For a moment, he let himself consider it. Surely Charlie and Neumann would be more open to the idea of someone covering his actual policies, as opposed to his personal life. Besides, she had approached him about it. At least it would appear less desperate. Or would her normal column still give pause? “Call the campaign office and set something up,” he said.

“I did, Sir,” Miss Menke replied, her shoulders and gaze dropping. “That’s why I’ve come to you.”

Then again, Charlie would still be put off by her initial refusal to interview Mustang. He could almost see his manager saying as much. “Perhaps if you had better foresight, Miss Menke, you would have had a different result.” He turned away from her again and started down the lime avenue.

“I don’t get to choose!” she cried.

He sighed and turned back. Yes, she was very much like Edward. Petulant. Relentless.

She moved toward him and he sergeant stepped out of the guardhouse again and said, “Excuse me! Miss, I need—”

Mustang held up a hand and said, “It’s alright, Sergeant.”

The sergeant looked between General Mustang and Miss Menke, and he nodded, but he hovered nearby. He was more afraid of disobeying Major Hawkeye than he was of displeasing the general, which, Mustang allowed, was a sensible way to feel in rainy weather.

Miss Menke took a deep breath. “Sir, you were new once. You did what others told you to do because you had to, but you still had to fight your way to where you are now. Don’t you remember that?”

He did remember. He remembered grueling schedules and taking extra work to make his way. He could recognize that same ambition in her eyes.

“I want to write about you, Sir,” she said. “And not the sort of thing I usually write. I want to write something that matters.”

He pressed his lips together. “And if you can handle something like this you get moved to a different column? Or is this for your portfolio?” When she blinked, he explained, “You want to get ahead.”

“And you want to talk about the parts of your platform everyone else is ignoring.”

A city tram pulled up and a crowd of uniformed officers poured out of the doors and popped open umbrellas, creating a sea of black vinyl domes. He saw Hawkeye in the crowd, and she glanced at Miss Menke with a question written on her face. He shook his head in reply.

He looked down at the reporter, who still waited for his response, and he said, “That may be true, but unfortunately, Miss Menke, it’s not possible. Sometimes I still have to do what others tell me, just like you do.” He had made a decision to trust his campaign team. He turned to Hawkeye as she approached with her own identification badge out. “Major Hawkeye, good morning.”

“Good morning, Sir,” she said as the sergeant waved her through.

“Have a nice day, Miss Menke,” he said, and he followed after Hawkeye.

She looked at him as he caught up with her, and he sighed. He had made no promises and given no remarks. Satisfied, Hawkeye nodded.

“Neumann wanted to speak with you yesterday,” he said. His wet collar rubbed at his neck. He felt as if he had swam up the Marl River to get to work instead of driving.

“Yes, Sir,” she said, unperturbed by the incessant rainfall. She seemed to almost enjoy heavy storms. Of course, she had grown up in the East and with its wild weather. He had lived there for fifteen years and was still unused to it. “He brought up the change in travel plans.”

He nodded. Central would be cooler and drier, and there were people he wanted to see. He was glad he would be going earlier. “We’re leaving in one week.” He worried that she would stick to her original plan. She would not have much time to prepare for weeks away from home. Black Hayate was old and she might worry about keeping him away and in a hotel for too long. “You’re coming?”

She smiled. “After all this time, you have to ask?”

He smiled back and relaxed. Of course, she would leave early with him. She was his in a way that none of the other officers were, in a way they never could be. He felt the urge to just reach out and touch her, to put his hand on the small of her back and—He realized his hand was already hovering there, and he clenched his fist and forced it to his side. The law was explicit about outward affection between officers in a direct line of command. If anyone had seen, if that reporter had seen…He looked behind him, and his pulse pounded in his ears when he saw that Miss Menke was still at the gate, still watching him with narrowed eyes. Had she seen?

He cleared his throat and looked forward again. “There’s nothing too important to reschedule?”

“Nothing Captain Havoc can’t do for you, Sir.”

He nodded. “Good.” If she had seen, how bad was it really? How long had his hand been there? One second? Two? Longer? “Let me know when you speak with him.” They reached the wide staircase and started the climb. “When does Breda get in today?” Focusing on the events of the day before would keep him from troubling over anything the reporter had or had not seen.

“Ten-hundred hours.”

He groaned. He would be waiting for three hours for the captain to arrive. “Bring him into my office when he gets here. And come in yourself.”

She nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

There were things he had learned in his time away from the office that he needed both of them to hear. “I have a date on Thursday. One of Vanessa’s girls. Don’t let me forget.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Where, Sir?”

“The opera.” He had thought it appropriate. It was dark, loud, and he could get a secluded box seat easily. It would also make him look cultured, which would help his public image.

Hawkeye frowned at him and raised an eyebrow in a way that made him feel he had made a poor decision.

“What’s that look?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ll remind you to drink some coffee beforehand.”

He scoffed. “It was one time!” Besides, the Eastern Opera was running a later piece by Johann Keller, and he rather liked Keller. He could not be mad at her for making a well-placed joke at his expense, though, not when a smile played at the corners of her mouth like that and her eyes gleamed like they always did when she teased him. 

But he did need to address the issue of the new identification policy she had implemented on his behalf after he had left her with the office and his scheduler. His scheduler, who had stood when she had entered the room and had an interest in her that everyone seemed to have noticed. “So, Neumann—”

“As I said, we spoke,” she said, as if it answered every question he had. “And he left soon after you did, Sir.”

He frowned as they crested the stairs and closed their umbrellas, and he threw open the doors and strode into his base of operations with her behind him. Personnel scrambled to salute him as he passed, and he ignored them. It would take hours to walk to his office if he stopped to acknowledge everyone, and the dry air inside reminded him that he was wet and he wanted to be alone and dry as soon as possible.

There was another staircase to the right, and he climbed with loud footfalls that echoed the discomfort of his thoughts. “And here I thought he would ask you to dinner.”

“He did.”

He halted on a stair and wheeled about to face her, and she grabbed the banister to keep herself from falling back. He swallowed and furrowed his brow, unwilling to ask what her answer had been. Neumann was a handsome man, Mustang’s own age, but without the odd combination of a round baby face and early grey hairs. His hands did not shake from old wounds, he did not need glasses to read small text. Neumann was clever. Most offensive of all, Neumann was kind and gentle, just as she was. 

Hawkeye shook her head, but he was not satisfied. His jaw tightened as he wondered if she would ever consider it. She clicked her tongue, and he knew. He knew it was none of his business, but he looked up at the ceiling because somewhere above them was an office that needed to run without a romantic drama miring efficiency and casting a shadow over his campaign. Then he looked back at her and shrugged. He did not care what she did with her time outside of the office. She sighed and smiled at him, because she knew he did care.

He cared too much. He cared so much that he made mistakes in front of reporters who could run a story the next day about his possible affair with his adjutant.

He turned back and started up the stairs again. “What do I have today?”

“You have a few new items on your agenda, telephone calls with Central and the like,” she said. “They’re demanding your attention on yesterday’s…” He was already nodding his head, so she left the incident unnamed and continued, “And you might want to respond to General Armstrong. She called three more times.”

He let out a loud sigh as he stepped onto the landing and walked down the hallway. “Of course she did.” He heard Hawkeye quickening her steps to keep up with him.

“There’s an afternoon meeting to prepare for inventory next month,” she said.

He grimaced. Inventory was the worst part of his year. He did not have to do any counting, but every department would come to him with numbers and charts, and he would have to pay attention to all of it. However, he had managed to be lucky that year. He was heading to Central just in time. “You didn’t tell them not to expect me? I’m not even going to be here for inventory.”

“I can let them know, Sir,” she said as they approached the office door. “But I thought you might appreciate the chance to take a nap.”

He grinned and pushed open the door because she knew him too well. “I would.” In an inventory meeting, even if he fell asleep at the table, no one would dare wake him.

An unusual silence hung over the office. Fuery did not look up from his radio, and Havoc only nodded to the general. The enlisted personnel under them busied themselves with organizing and filling out various documents, but all conversation was hushed.

He knew no one would have forgotten the day before, but could they not act with a degree of normalcy?

He looked at Hawkeye and jerked his chin toward his private office. When they were inside, behind the safety of the closed door, he said, “Has anyone asked?”

It was a ludicrous question, because of course people had asked, but her response was gentle all the same. “Yes, Sir. Our operators have been fielding calls, and we’re not allowing any non-personnel past the gates.” 

He remembered. What did she mean by telling people he wasn’t an exception? He only ran the region. He should be allowed into his place of work without jumping hurdles.

“Simple extra security measures, Sir. Until we know more.”

He looked at her and frowned. She shook her head and looked toward the ceiling. It had come from higher than his office, then. Had the Führer himself commanded it? He considered his chair, but he did not want to sit in wet clothing and ruin the leather. “For God’s sake,” he said. “They didn’t attack a military base. Didn’t Fuery say they could have been anywhere?” 

Hawkeye approached him with a dry shirt, jacket, and pair of pants she had found by some magic only she possessed. He accepted them and said, “Thank you, Hawkeye.”

She nodded once, brushed her wet bangs from her forehead, and left him.

He changed and looked over the list she had left on the center of his desk. There were notes paper clipped to the sheet and comments in her writing in the margins. The top note was a message from the Führer’s office requesting a returned telephone call.

He dialed the office number and rattled off his identification code, but when the operators finally put him through, Vogel, the Minister to the Führer, answered. Unfortunately, the Führer was very busy at the moment, and would he mind making an appointment for later, Sir? Mustang said he would not mind, and Vogel, sounding more harried than he usually did, asked him to hold for a few minutes before coming back and saying that he was sorry, but the Führer was very unwell and would not be taking any calls that day. Vogel would call him back, though, after meeting with the Ministers of Internal Affairs and Security. It was the third time that month the Führer had been too ill to take his call, and Mustang didn’t know whether he should be concerned about Grumman’s health or annoyed that his staff couldn’t think of a better excuse, but he agreed.

Then there were three notes regarding telephone calls from General Armstrong in the North, but he would prefer to put those off as long as possible. He did, however, need to telephone her brother, the newly minted Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong, about security at the Cretan Ambassador’s welcome party the following month. He remembered that Armstrong had requested to borrow Hawkeye for the night. Mustang was inclined to agree—although he needed a date for the event, he could hear Charlie telling him that it needed to be someone not on his payroll. He could not give the image that he needed to pay people to agree to being seen with him, and he could not risk a rumoured affair with a subordinate. In the best case, he would get a slap on the wrist and she would be reassigned to a different office. He could not afford having her in a different office. In the worst case, he would be stripped of his rank and his political career would be finished.

He needed to be more careful. He had been crossing too many lines in recent months, and he would have to address it at some point. They were both in danger of going too far, and when that happened, someone would notice.

Had the reporter noticed? Had she noted his gesture as anything other than friendly? Maybe that watchful expression on her face had meant something different.

Gracia Hughes. Of course he would take Gracia Hughes to the Ambassador’s party. He would call on her when he arrived in Central and ask her to be his plus-one. Her being the long-time widow of one of his closest friends might wave off any romantic suspicions from the press. And as for the other thing…Perhaps he could rely on his reputation to save him. The general public would expect him to hit on the female personnel in Eastern Headquarters, even if the law prohibited it.

Why had he reacted? Why had he looked back as if he had been caught? Would he wake up the next day to a headline about him and a court-martial order on his desk?

A knock sounded at his door and Major Hawkeye poked her head in. “Sir, Captain Breda is here, if you’re ready for him.”

He looked at the clock on his wall. He had not realized how much time had passed. “Bring him in.” While Hawkeye left to get the captain, Mustang dug into the pocket of his overcoat. The scrap of paper was damp, and the ink had run, but the name was still legible.

Breda saluted when he entered, and Mustang released him before saying, “I have something for you.” He handed off the paper, and continued, “It’s only one name, but it’s all we have to go on right now.”

“Elise Holfer,” Hawkeye read over Breda’s shoulder. She furrowed her brow like she did when she was thinking harder.

“One name is better than none,” Breda said.

Mustang shrugged. “It may be none in the end.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. “She’s an alchemist. Failed the State Alchemist examination twice, which is no surprise.” The exam was grueling. He had failed the written portion his first time around. He knew of only one person who had ever passed both the written and practical exams on the first try—an obnoxious child from Resembool. “And she’s been vocal about her feelings on the Führer’s scaling back the program.”

“Not thrilled, I take it?” Breda said.

Mustang shook his head. “According to Vanessa, she’s been waxing nostalgic about the old government. I realize there’s a difference between nostalgia and actively trying to reinstate the old government, but Vanessa thought she might be worth something all the same.” He watched Hawkeye as she bit her lip in thought. “Miss Holfer is apparently a bit anti-Ishvalan.”

“A bit?” Breda asked.

“Did you know there’s a movement favouring the relegation of the region to a separate territory?” Mustang said, and that shocked Hawkeye from her reverie. “I didn’t. The supporters want border control and a strong military presence, and all Ishvalans would need travel documents to cross into Amestris.” There had been a small separatist movement in Ishval as well, though it stemmed from different motivations. The Ishvalan separatists wanted a total demilitarization and self-governance, but the Amestrian group had different ideas. “But they don’t want the Ishvalans to have autonomy. Separate, but with stricter governance.”

Hawkeye took a deep breath. “So what it was before the war.”

“That’s disturbing,” Breda said. “But something like that can’t have much traction.”

“Perhaps,” Mustang said. In his experience, hatred was a powerful—and contagious—motivator. “She may be connected to what happened yesterday, and if she’s not, she may know people who are. Can you look into her?”

Breda scoffed. “Give me two weeks and I can tell you what score she made on her second spelling test in primary school.”

“You have four days,” Mustang said. Breda’s eyebrows shot up, and Mustang gestured between himself and Hawkeye. “We’re leaving for Central on Sunday, and I want a report on my desk before then.” It would require all of Captain Breda’s focus, but Mustang had no doubt that he would get it done. 

“And if she is connected to this freedom army, Sir?”

He could feel the spasms starting in his knuckles. He was meant to be reducing his stress, according to his doctor. “They’ve already bombed building with people inside, and we’re lucky no one died. We can’t wait for them to actually kill someone. They’re terrorists. We stop them by any means necessary.” He pressed his hands flat against the top of his desk, but his thumb jerked, and Hawkeye frowned. “We need to do what we can to find them and take them out.” He nodded. “That’s all.”

Breda saluted and left.

Before Hawkeye could excuse herself, he asked, “Are you alright?”

She nodded. “It’s the name, Sir.” He waited for an explanation, and she continued, “It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

His gut twisted. If she knew Miss Holfer, if they were old acquaintances, could he expect anything from her? He thought of Heathcliff—a soldier and friend from the Academy who had defected to join the Ishvalan resistance—of staring down the barrel of his gun before watching him bleed out on the street of an Ishvalan town, of Maes Hughes being the one who had killed him. He knew her to be incapable of the same act, of killing a friend, yet he needed her. If she could not place the name, it might only be someone she had met in passing. Still, it was a terrible thing to ask. His hands twitched and his fingers locked. “Will you be ready to pull the trigger if needed?”

“I’m always ready.” She reached forward and squeezed his hand to still the shaking. “Sir.”

Then she was gone, and he was alone again.

He ran a hand down his face and sighed. There was still much to be done. He needed to call Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong, then he needed to call General Armstrong. He could wait to call her after lunch, though. Of course, after lunch he had that meeting, so he would have to call her after that. But then it would be late in the day, and it might be best to put off calling her until the next morning.

He found the lieutenant colonel’s number in a card box and dialed. He hoped Breda would be able to get him some information soon. He had no idea what was coming, but he knew he needed to be prepared like he hadn’t been in a long time.

* * *

In a matter of hours and with Falman’s help, Breda had pulled two boxes of documents and small news articles on various anti-Ishvalan movements spanning the past ten years. None had dubbed themselves the Amestrian Freedom Army, and Breda was still investigating Elise Holfer, but the General had been insistent on reading everything as it came to him. It meant a week of sleepless nights for him, and Riza was not happy. There would be little time for rest in Central, and he would overwork himself if he did not take some time to sleep.

The General kicked open the door to his home study and dropped the box he carried with a loud thud. “Just drop it on top,” he said before walking toward the bay window that overlooked the street.

Riza pushed the first box to the wall with her foot, because he would trip over it in the night if she didn’t, and then dropped her own on top of it. She straightened, flexed her fingers, and waited for him to speak.

“We need to talk,” he said.

She had assumed as much when he had asked her to help him move the boxes from headquarters to his home. She looked at him, but he leaned against the window frame with his arms folded and face lifted to the ceiling.

“Have you ever thought about the fraternization law?” he asked. “I mean, really thought about it?” 

Her throat and chest constricted. She thought about it every day. That law seemed to define her life.

He laughed and dropped his head and said, “It’s funny,” though it was not. “I’ve spent years congratulating myself for not breaking it because we never…” He gestured between the two of them. “I mean, not really.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. She did the same, telling herself that those minute displays of affection were fine because they would never go further, pretending that the one kiss many years ago did not count because they had both been so young. She let herself believe that whispers and soft touches in private were harmless, because she did not know which was worse: being with him in only fleeting moments or not being with him at all. As long as nothing more happened, they had not broken the law, and they could deny they ever had.

What a beautiful lie she lived.

“But it doesn’t say that, does it?” he said.

“No, Sir,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.” It was such a small part of the law, a mere example of the law might be breached. Yet their general friendliness, their mutual affection, his obvious favouritism, the abundance of favours they did in and out of the office that were irrelevant to their job performance, all of those things were equal violations. Anything that could disrupt the prescribed power balance was forbidden.

“What’s the exact wording?” he asked. “‘Behaviour or relationship that compromises—‘”

“‘That appears to or may compromise the chain of command,’” she corrected. She clasped her hands behind her back and whispered, “Sir.”

He nodded. “Appears.” He looked through the window at the storm and said, more to himself than to her, “It doesn’t matter if the chain of command isn’t compromised. It can’t even look like it might be.”

Her shoulders tightened. They had always adhered to the chain of command, but there must have been a reason he was so concerned with appearances. “Who, Sir?” He looked at her again, and she felt her body go cold. “Oh.” The reporter.

He swallowed. “We need to be above reproach.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He nodded and looked out the window where the rain continued to pound the glass and the pavement. “I’ll drive you home.” He pushed himself off the wall and walked past her and into the hall.

She followed him down the stairs. “Sir!” What was he thinking? What had they just agreed to? “Sir, please stop.”

He reached the ground floor and busied himself with pulling his overcoat from the rack by the front door and searching through the pockets. “What kind of superior officer would I be if I let you get sick in this weather? And I can’t afford to have you taking sick days now.” He pulled his keys from the coat pocket and pointed them at her. “Believe me, my interest is purely professional.”

She shook her head. “‘Above reproach,’ Sir.”

He considered her for a moment, then dropped the keys back into the coat pocket. “I should have waited until the storm passed to have that conversation.” He smiled that sad smile that weakened her knees and made her want to throw her arms around him and squeeze until he laughed. She gripped the banister harder. 

His gaze dropped to her hand, and he opened his mouth to say something else, but a knock sounded at the front door. He turned away and she let out a long sigh.

The General opened the door to a handsome, hard-faced man with wavy strands of wet, dark hair plastered to his forehead.

“David,” the General said, standing aside so the other man could come in. “Good to see you.” 

Riza watched the two men shake hands and exchange tight pleasantries. She was certain the General had never mentioned anyone named David, yet there was something familiar about this man and the way his mouth turned down at the corners. He was perhaps a little older than she was.

“Major Hawkeye,” the General began, and the other man seemed to notice her for the first time. She stepped off the stairs and into the foyer while the General continued, “This is Doctor David Bauer. David, this is Major Riza Hawkeye.”

Doctor Bauer shook her hand once, and she knew why he looked familiar. This was Mrs. Bauer’s son, the one who picked her up every night. They had the same grey eyes and perpetual frown.

When Doctor Bauer pulled back from the brief handshake, the General said, “He’s a professor at the university.”

Riza wanted to ask what he taught, but Doctor Bauer looked toward the hall leading to the kitchen and shouted, “Ma!”

“Davy?” rang Mrs. Bauer’s voice. “Can you come help me with this crate?”

Doctor Bauer scrunched his nose and mumbled, “Crate?” Then he looked at Hawkeye and said, “Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

Riza watched him stomp down the hallway while asking his mother what crate was she talking about, then she looked at the General and asked, “Is he always so amiable?”

The General shook his head and shrugged. “Honestly, that was downright lovable.”

She smiled.

He looked away and said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”

“I’m sure,” she said, because they needed to step back and be able to deny anything that came their way. “I can take a tram.”

“Not in this weather,” said Mrs. Bauer said as she emerged from the kitchen and marched down the hallway, her perpetual frown and tight bun immovable. “Davy can drive you.”

“Oh, no,” Riza said. “That’s not—”

Mrs. Bauer reached her and grabbed her hand and patted the back of it. “No, dear. He’ll be happy to do it.”

Riza felt her ears grow hot at the thought of imposing on a complete stranger, and she was about to protest again when the General said, “Compromise.”

Doctor Bauer staggered into the hallway with a cumbersome wooden box.

The General said, “You wouldn’t mind driving Major Hawkeye home, would you?”

The doctor stopped, scrunched up his face, and said, “What?”

“No, Sir,” Mrs. Bauer said. “He wouldn’t mind at all.”

Doctor Bauer took a deep breath and gave a hard smile. “Sure.”

“Well, that’s that,” the General said while Doctor Bauer pushed between him and Riza to get to the door. “See you tomorrow, Major.”

“Sir.” Riza saw that the doctor was about to head into the street with his hands full and nothing to cover him, so she saluted the General, popped open her own umbrella, and ran onto the stoop.

Doctor Bauer looked up when she put the umbrella over his head and muttered, “Thanks.” When they reached a black automobile parked in the street, he asked her to open the back door for him, and he hefted the crate and slid it along the back bench seat. He straightened, wiped his hands on his trousers, and said, “Where do you live?”

“Fifth ward,” Riza said. It was not too far, and she needed to apologize for the imposition and to insist that she could take public transportation. “By the Red Bridge stop. But, Doctor, you don’t—”

“I have a choice?” he asked with that same hard smile, then he shrugged and closed the automobile door. “I live close by. It’s on my way.” He pointed to the front bench seat. “Get in. They started shutting down public transportation anyway.” Then he ran out from under the umbrella and around the automobile to get into the driver’s seat.

Riza turned to look back at the General’s home, unsure of what she had hoped to see, but the door was closed and Mrs. Bauer was descending the front steps. With an odd numbness filling her, she closed her umbrella and slid to the middle of the bench while Doctor Bauer turned his key in the ignition, slammed his foot on the starter button, and the engine sputtered to life.

“And call me David,” he said.

Mrs. Bauer climbed into the automobile, wedging Riza between the two Bauers, and David said, “Ma, what is in that?”

“The grocer was having a sale on potatoes,” Mrs. Bauer said, as if it were obvious.

He scoffed. “So you bought enough to feed the whole city?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Davy.”

Riza pulled her hands into her lap and crossed her ankles in an attempt to be as compact as possible. The gentle, familial bickering continued and made her throat feel thick with longing for a time she never had. She watched the raindrops stream down the windows and lamplights pass in the darkness.

She needed to call the boys, she remembered. In all the madness from the radio hijacking the previous day, she had forgotten to see how they were, to see if the new baby had indeed come. She could call in the morning before work.

The automobile rolled to a stop in front of a row of low row houses. David left the engine running while he and Mrs. Bauer climbed out and wrangled the crate from the back seat.

Riza slid over on the bench and leaned her head against the window and watched the blurry scene. Two tall men, one Mrs. Bauer’s age and one an older copy of David, came from one of the row houses and took the crate from David. Mrs. Bauer passed her umbrella to her son and gave him a kiss on the cheek. There were claps on shoulders and indistinct greetings and farewells, and then David ran back to the car and jumped in with a “Right. Red Bridge.”

She tried to focus on the rain, the hypnotic beating of the windscreen wiper, but the absence of happy squabbles made the automobile feel cold and empty. “Do you enjoy teaching?”

He hummed. “Not at all. It’s the worst part of the job. I only put up with students for the grants.”

Riza looked back through the windscreen. There would be no conversation, then.

“You work for a State Alchemist, though,” he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “So I can’t imagine exchanging your freedom for exorbitant amounts of money is a foreign concept to you.” Then he looked at her and smirked in a way that made her bristle with anger. “I assume few State Alchemists sign up because they actually believe in the program.”

Riza dropped her head and closed her eyes as a memory of the General, twenty-years-old and hopeful, came to her. He had wanted to become a State Alchemist so he could help people, he had said. As many people as possible. He had believed the State Alchemist program and the military, the machines that ran the country, were the best way to accomplish that. They had both believed that. Experience had proved them wrong, but he had never lost that idealism. He still believed he could help people, and that’s what drove every action at the end of the day. “You assume much,” she said.

“Do I?”

She looked up at him, ready to say something in defense of the program out of habit, but he nodded and said, “Oh, I see.”

Riza relaxed.

He continued, “He’s an idealist and is only pretending to have a military career built on the exploitation of others. It makes perfect sense.”

She took a deep breath. It made more sense than he realized, but saying so would reveal too much. Still, she needed to defend the General, so she said, “He’s a good superior. He’s loyal.” She smiled in spite of the heat rising in her. “He takes care of those below him.”

“I can tell,” David said. “It was very generous of him to volunteer my services tonight.”

Riza felt the anger dying as she began to understand. He had not been in the room for the conversation. How inconsiderate the General must look to him. “Your mother—”

“Is my mother,” he said. “I don’t work for him, and I don’t appreciate his arrogance in thinking I do.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and gave her that same self-satisfied smirk. “You seem like you’d pass that along, and if you weren’t planning to, please do.”

If he only knew what had happened, he might change his mind. “I think you might have formed an unjust opinion,” she began.

“I don’t,” he said, putting a halt to the rest of her argument. “This wasn’t our first meeting. And even without…” He waved one hand in the air. “No one truly humble thinks they’re the best person to run a country. Throwing your name into a national election takes a massive ego, believe me.”

Riza leaned back and looked out the window, resigning herself to the fact that this was a man with whom one could not argue. She could pass the rest of the ride in silence, and then they would never see each other again unless—

“Where are you from?”

The question startled her and she sat upright and looked at him. She wondered why he had a sudden interest in her childhood.

He repeated, “Where are you from?”

“Amlingstadt,” she said. That tiny town in the northern part of the East, where a flock of sheep was a landmark and where everyone had known who she was and, more importantly, whose daughter she was.

David shook his head.

“Do you know where Burne is?” she asked. It was another small town, but it at least had a railroad running through it.

“Really?” He cocked his head to the side. Then he said, “Your accent doesn’t sound Eastern.”

She swallowed. Her father had at least ensured she had a proper education by his standards. “My father was determined that I sound…” She trailed off as she remembered his words, but struggled to find one less demeaning.

“Educated?” David asked. He nodded as if he had made a fascinating discovery. “I’ve heard of that. New money parents wanting their kids to talk like they’re from Central so people assume they’re of higher stock than they are.”

Riza clenched her jaw and turned her head away. In her memory, the Hawkeye estate was a carcass, rotting and infested with misery. At one point, long before her birth, it had been grand, a seat of nobility. She had grown up in that house when it was in a state of terrible disrepair and only a few rooms had been usable. Her father had never bothered to fix it. “I’d hardly say I come from money,” she said to herself.

He heard her though and said, “So he was an academic. What did he do?”

She squeezed her hands in her lap until her fingertips felt numb. Her father had never bothered with anything that wasn’t relevant to his research. For most of her life, that meant he hadn’t bothered with her, until the day he did. How ready she had been to be noticed by that man whose acceptance she had craved for years. How willing she had been to do what he had asked because being valued as an old journal was better than not being valued at all.

That wasn’t fair, though. He had loved her in his own way. He had trusted her. She repeated it to herself. He had trusted her. He had trusted her.

“That’s alright,” David said. “I don’t mind tense silences.”

The lines on her back tingled and the scars burned as if they were new.

He had trusted her.

“He was an alchemist,” she said.

“And you still went military?” David asked. He braked at a stop sign and looked at her with no malice. He seemed almost curious. “It’s just that alchemists, excluding the federally funded-ones, rarely have anything good to say about the military.”

She swallowed and fought the desire to jump out of the automobile. “He didn’t.”

David hummed and the automobile rolled forward. “I see.”

She was content to leave the conversation there, to watch lit windows and lamps pass in the night.

“You don’t have anything good to say about him.”

Heat rose behind her eyelids and her heart fluttered with the urge to show some loyalty, to prove the accusation wrong. He had trusted her. “My father was passionate and intelligent.”

David nodded. “Angry and condescending. Go on.”

“Much like you,” she snapped.

His eyes widened even as he stared at the road, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. She should not have said that.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. My entire opinion of you just changed.” Then he grinned, a real, wide grin.

His good opinion was not something she had desired, but she was relieved to know he had not taken much offense. The conversation needed to shift into an area that was less emotional for her, away from childhood pain and into the calm of small talk. “What did you say you taught?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Psychology.”

She could not help it. She laughed, because of course he did. All of his conjecture about her life, the way he had been watching her, made sense. She had met psychologists before—every time she discharged a firearm she went through requisite screening to be recommended again for active duty—but those had been patient, less invasive, and had not made such insulting conclusions for her.

He held up a finger. “Hey, I don’t do psychoanalysis. I don’t care enough to do it well, so don’t worry.”

She shook her head and scoffed, because what had he been doing for the entire ride then?

He shrugged. “Alright, fine, but everything you’ve given me has been easy.” He turned onto the Red Bridge over the Marl River. “Can you tell me how to go from here?”

She nodded once.

“And for the record,” he continued, “I study political psychology. Fringe movements, mostly. How ideological groups form and operate.” 

Riza’s breath hitched. If that was his focus, then regardless of his politics or bearing, the General might find him useful, especially in light of their new adversaries fighting for “an Amestrian future for an Amestrian people.”

He smiled and leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Go on. Ask me. You’re dying to.”

She clenched her jaw when he guessed her thoughts. Had he been directing the whole conversation to boast about how much he could deduce and how much she could not? She did not want to give him the satisfaction of asking, but she said, “I’m sure you’re dying to tell me.”

He leaned back. “I heard it. The whole country did, which I’m sure you already know. It was a smart time to broadcast. Everyone is huddled around the wireless, eating breakfast, running morning errands in shops, making their way into the office while the news plays…” He nodded as if impressed. “I would have done the same if I were trying to disseminate propaganda.”

She squinted at him as a sneaking suspicion took root in her mind. It would be too easy. Surely the so-called “Amestrian Freedom Army” would not go around praising themselves if they wished to remain undetected by law enforcement. She saw they were approaching a particular cross street and said, “Turn left here.”

“It’s not great for your boss though,” he said.

“Now right.”

“Not that I was planning to vote for him anyway,” he continued.

Riza continued to watch him, even as she remembered what Neumann had said. “Crazy won’t convince anyone.”

David hummed and dropped his head to the side. “You’re wrong. But whatever helps you sleep at night.”

She huffed and said, “I can walk from here.” They were on her street, and suspicions or no suspicions, useful or useless, she had no desire to hear any more from Doctor David Bauer, even if she did rather like his mother.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I can’t let you do that.” She thought he would mention the rain or the flooding storm drains, but he said, “General Mustang might dock my pay.”

Her skin prickled and heated and she tasted bile. “Two blocks up.”

“And I’m not totally heartless,” he said, though she did not believe him. “I’m not happy with the handling of this, but I wouldn’t expect you to walk in this. I would have offered myself, in the end.”

She had every confidence he would not have. She tapped the window as her building came into view and said, “Here.”

He slowed the automobile and popped open the glove box as they came to a stop. He pulled out a stack of business cards and held one out to her. “Here’s my card. Give me a call if you ever need a ride again.” When she made no move to take it, he gave it a little wave. “As I said, I’m just unhappy with how this went down, not with the actual driving you home part.”

She pressed her lips together as she stared at the card. “I don’t think so.” She would rather walk home in a blizzard than share a ride with him again.

He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Look, if you’re worried I’m trying to pick you up, that’s not the case. I promise. I have a girlfriend.”

She let out a breathy laugh, because the thought had not entered her mind.

“I know,” he said. “How is it possible?”

She opened the automobile door and popped her umbrella.

“Really,” he said, proffering the card again. “We got off on the wrong foot, and that’s my fault. I want to make it up to you if I can.”

A different thought, one less related to starting anew and more related to radios and political psychology, returned, and she did reach out and take the card. He smiled like he had won something, and before he could say anything more, she slammed the door, turned on her heel, and marched through the front door of her apartment building.

She was lucky. When she had moved after her promotion to major two years earlier, she had found a flat on the ground floor of a building with a covered patio. She usually took Black Hayate out there when she got home from work, and she needed to, judging by the way he whined from inside before she had put the key into her lock. She didn’t leash him to take him out. He was getting old and sick, and he could no longer run as far or as far as he once could. He also would not try to run in the rain.

When she opened the door off of her tiny kitchen, he pushed between her legs and padded to a corner where some potted plants grew. She sat on the door sill and told herself she would take care of his business in the morning, even though she knew she would be outside with a bag in case another tenant woke before she did.

She slipped her boots off and rolled her ankles, and Black Hayate came to her and pressed himself against her leg. She pulled him into her lap and rubbed her hands over his face and soft ears. His muzzle had been greying of late, and there was a cataract in his left eye and those lumps on his belly about which the veterinarian hold told her nothing could be done. “Just keep him comfortable,” he had said. “Comfortable and happy.”

Riza looked at him with all the earnestness she could muster after two stressful days. “You’re a good boy.” She smiled at a joke she had once made: of all the men in her life, he was the best one. With a heavy sigh, she buried her face in his side and repeated what she had said. His small body shook with excitement and he licked the side of her face.

After a few more minutes of sitting and hugging her dog, she would go back inside, and he would wait at the bedroom door until she was ready to sleep. But not yet. She scratched behind one of his ears. No, not yet.


	6. Chapter 6

His wife yawned wide and ran her finger over their baby’s tiny nose. “You were so easy,” Winry whispered. She had tucked their daughter into a bassinet by the side of their bed, close enough that she could reach her from where she lay. She had complained that walking was too painful, and if anyone deserved to be lazy, she did.

Edward watched his sleeping daughter, her mouth open in a perfect “o,” her little fingers and toes covered in knit socks so she would not scratch the delicate skin of her face. His chest shook when he breathed in, and he leaned over and pressed his lips to Winry’s shoulder to keep himself from crying. His chest was so full he felt as if it could not contain his breath, and he had not stopped smiling, not for two days. “That was easy?”

She laughed and splayed her hand on the baby’s stomach. “Compared to her brother?”

Edward grinned. Yuriy’s birth had lasted almost nineteen hours, but this one had only lasted four. Doctor Maller had surprised him with that fact. To Edward, it had lasted an eternity. Yet it had still been midday, and Yuriy had awoken and insistent on seeing—and sharing his strawberries with—his new baby sister. Al had explained that the baby could not eat strawberries yet, and then he had taken Yuriy outside to play and give the parents some much-needed alone time.

Winry turned onto her back and pressed her hand against Edward’s cheek. “You have to go.”

Edward nodded. “Yeah.” He pulled Winry closer and swallowed down the lump in his throat when his daughter cooed and gurgled. “You’ll be alright alone?” Mei had taken Yuriy down to the river to catch frogs, though he had seen her shove an elementary alkahestry book into her bag with a conspiratorial wink. There was no way of knowing when they would be back.

She nodded and stretched her arms above her head. “I’m fine here. You and Al go.” 

There was a town meeting that afternoon, which Edward had promised to attend. Of course, he had promised that when he’d thought his child wouldn’t be born for another two weeks, but Winry wouldn’t hear of his backing out even for that. The baby was already born, she had insisted. He wouldn’t miss anything at home. Then she had suggested Alphonse go as well, saying that as long as he intended to stay in Resembool, he should reintegrate himself into the town.

She yawned again. “I just want to sleep.”

He buried his smile in her hair. “You deserve it.” He brushed her hair back from her forehead, and her eyes closed. “You are amazing.”

She smiled, and her nose crinkled. “I am pretty awesome, aren’t I?”

They stayed there on the bed, his hand stroking her hair, until he looked at the clock on the wall and realised he needed to leave if he wanted to be on time.

“Do you want me to get anything while I’m out?” he asked.

When only her soft breathing answered, he knew she was asleep. He leaned across her and touched his daughter’s round, wrinkled cheek, and thought of how amazing life was. The formation of that body was a simple process. Proteins and molecules passed between cells and coalesced into new cells, made possible by the one law that governed everything.

Almost everything.

He knew better than most that that law did not bind souls. They were not created from something else or formed by any process science could harness. Souls simply became in a vessel small and wrinkled, grew into it, and then lived long enough to grow out of it again. And then they were not.

Life itself contradicted equivalent exchange.

He kissed Winry’s forehead and whispered, “I love you,” then he rolled out of bed and crept downstairs.

For two days, he had lived in peace and bliss, uninterrupted by radios or newspapers or anything outside his world and his family. Alphonse and Mei had received visitors and well-wishers who had stopped by, in spite of the storm, with baskets of fruit and roast ham hocks and bread and cakes. But that time had passed, and he needed to return to the outside world.

The first and most significant problem waited for him in the front room. Alphonse straightened up from where he had been standing over the ledger on the desk. The previous evening, after Winry had gone to bed, he had given his brother the accounts; it was easier to show him than it was to explain. He did not expect Alphonse to have a solution to his financial troubles, but it would be a relief to at least talk to him about everything.

“Hey,” Alphonse said while Edward passed him an umbrella and a coat. “How is she?”

“Sleeping,” Edward said, and they stepped outside the house to brave the downpour. If he knew the Eastern weather patterns—and he did—the rain would stop sometime the next night, leaving a thick fog behind. When the fog dissipated, it would take the spring with it, and Resembool's cool autumn would begin.

Alphonse stepped around a deep puddle and said, “I finished going over it.”

Edward nodded and clenched his teeth. It would not have taken long to see the pattern. Reading more than a few pages would have shown how bad the issue was, how long it had been happening.

“It’s not good.”

“No kidding.” 

“You need to talk to Winry.”

Edward looked at his brother as they passed through the kissing gate and stepped onto the weathered dirt road. “You think I haven’t?” He sighed and looked ahead. “Al, she won’t even entertain the conversation. And I can’t bring it up now, what with Trisha’s being born two days ago, and—” He stopped when he noticed Alphonse was no longer in step with him, and he turned around.

Alphonse stared at him with wide eyes, and Edward realised he had not told him. He rubbed the back of his head, just above his ponytail, and said, “That’s what we were thinking about naming…” He took a deep breath, afraid Alphonse would think he’d stolen the right to use that name somehow. She had been his mother too. “If we had a girl,” he said. Of course, he didn’t have ownership of the name. Yet he felt the need to ask, “Is that alright?” Alphonse might still use it. First cousins shared names all the time. 

Alphonse nodded. “Yeah!” Then he smiled and started walking again, and Edward let himself relax. “Yeah,” Alphonse repeated. “I just didn’t know. I’m not blaming you for that,” he said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s my fault. I went silent pretty much immediately after you two found out she was pregnant.” He nodded again. “It’s perfect.”

Edward swallowed the lump that formed whenever he thought about his daughter and said, “Anyway, I didn’t want to ruin the past two days, but with Trisha’s just being born, we need an income now more than ever.” He stepped over a patch of mud and sighed. “She wants to help everyone who comes in. That’s just who she is.” It was one of the things he loved about her, one of the many reasons why he had married her. “But—” He stopped speaking while he tried to think of the words to adequately express his fears.

“Ed,” Alphonse said, “at this rate, you’ll be taking out loans just to eat by the end of next month.”

“I know.”

“And with interest rates now, you’ll—”

“I know, Al!” His neck felt tight. He wasn’t angry with Alphonse. It was his fault things had gone so far. If Winry kept making new pieces and ordering parts and performing maintenance without charging customers, they’d have to take out a mortgage on the house her family had owned for generations. Then, when the pattern continued, they would lose that house to the bank. Then where would they be?

People needed automail, he knew that, but at some point, they would have to agree that their children needed food and a roof overhead more.

Then, Alphonse said the most unbelievable thing.

“Have you talked to Mustang about it?”

Edward choked on the absurdity of the question. “What?”

“He has the means to help, and he would.” When Edward started shaking his head, Alphonse insisted, “You know he would.”

“You can’t think of a better solution?” Talking to General Roy Mustang about his financial woes was the worst thing he could imagine. Sure, Mustang would help in the end, but what would it cost?

“He still has his State Alchemist salary,” said Alphonse, ever reasonable. “And borrowing from him is better than being indebted to a bank.”

“Do you know what he would say if I asked him for help?” Worse, what if he expected something in return?

“He wouldn’t say anything!” Alphonse said, wrong for the first time. “It’s not like you’ve been drinking and gambling everything away. You’ve been helping people.” He shrugged. “That’s kind of his thing, too.”

Edward shook his head. “No.”

Alphonse scoffed. “Are you seriously going to risk losing your home and food for your children over your pride?”

Pride had nothing to do with it. He could take the comments and taunting that would last for years, most likely until either he or Mustang died. That was not the problem. The problem was that Mustang’s idea of repayment never involved money. His ultimate goals may have been selfless; however, his methods were anything but. How could he explain that to Alphonse, who had always assumed Mustang acted in better faith than he actually did? “It’s out of the question, Al.” Then, when Alphonse opened his mouth, he cut him off with, “Drop it.”

Alphonse did.

Still, the comment about the State Alchemist funding stayed with him. State Alchemists had always been overcompensated for their work. Perhaps there was a solution in that. “Maybe Riza’s the one to talk to.”

“Ed,” Alphonse said, “I don’t think she’s in the same position to help.”

“No,” Edward said. “I mean he’s probably given her special access to his bank account.” He relied on her to run pretty much everything else in his life, so why not that? He doubted Mustang spent much time balancing his chequebook—

“Ed, that’s illegal!”

“Oh, because Riza’s never done anything illegal in her life,” he said, remembering prison breaks and kidnapping homunculi and information smuggling and treason. Riza had been an active participant in all of those. And now that Mustang was running for Führer, Edward imagined that she had probably broken ten laws earlier that week.

“Alright, fine,” Alphonse said. “But only when he tells her to.” He kicked a pebble to the side of the road, and it splashed through a puddle. “Or when there’s a good reason.”

Edward frowned. That was an excellent point.

“Besides,” his brother continued, “you’re assuming she would keep a secret like that from him, which, ha.”

That was the best point of all. Edward knew things about Hawkeye's life and her relationship with Mustang that he would never repeat. He knew her loyalty to him was absolute. 

Yet he needed a short-term solution while he got Winry to accept that her current business model was not sustainable. “Fine,” he agreed as they approached a stone bridge that crossed one of the many rivers that sewed the Eastern countryside together. “I’ll think about talking to him.”

“Good,” Alphonse said.

As they stepped onto the bridge, Edward sensed his brother’s hand rise. And though he knew Alphonse would not push him—not with the river so high and the current so strong—he said, “I will kick your ass.” Then he marched down the road toward town, but not fast enough to miss Alphonse’s snort. 

“I think we both know who’d be doing the ass-kicking.”

* * *

Breda had been alone with boxes of files since he arrived that morning. He’d been grateful when Feury had brought him a sandwich around noon because time seemed to not exist within the walls of the Eastern Headquarters archives. He had anticipated General Mustang’s checking on his progress, or sending someone to do it, so when he heard a knock, he was not surprised to see Major Hawkeye standing in the doorway.

“Captain,” she said.

“Major,” he replied. She had her coat over one arm and an umbrella in her hand. He had assumed she had come on an errand from the general, but she appeared to have no intention of returning to the office. “You headed home?”

“I thought I’d check on you first,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

He groaned and slammed a metal drawer full of enlistment records closed. Beyond a few papers, he wasn’t having much luck, and his deadline was fast approaching. He might be in that room all night. “A few litres of coffee would be nice.” 

Her expression warmed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He watched her thumb through a stack of paper and added, “Or you can get the whole Ishval War declassified for me.”

She looked over more files he had spread across the surface of a dusty metal table and said, “You overestimate me.”

Breda wondered how much Hawkeye knew. Did she remember Elise Holfer? Had she come to check on his progress out of professional or personal interest? He reached for the file of leads he had found, Elise Holfer’s puzzle of a life, and tried to find the words to ask her.

Then she said, “Why did you pull this?”

He did not need to look up to know which file she meant. It was a personnel file. It was Hawkeye’s personnel file. He flipped through the documents he held, trying to find that photograph that had made him go hunting for more information on the major. “I was looking for something.” There it was, that grainy photograph of twenty people in military uniform.

“Like what?” she asked. “At this point, you should know everything in here.”

He had assumed that as well. Yet, even after fifteen years, he had been surprised. He’d been under the impression that General Mustang and Major Hawkeye had met before Ishval—they worked together with the ease of those who had a lifetime of acquaintance—but he knew the general was from Central. And her file listed her place of birth and residence prior to enlistment as Amlingstadt Municipality, Burne Land District, East Region. He had never heard of Amlingstadt before, but a quick search had revealed it to be a town with more sheep than people. There were other things he had learned, things he felt guilty for not knowing already.

He looked at her and said, “I didn’t know you were wounded in Ishval.”

Hawkeye snapped the file shut as if she could keep him from knowing what was inside. She lowered the file to the table, holding her hand on it. She looked toward the door, then at the papers, at her name in smudged type near the top of the cover page. “I thought,” she said, choosing each word, “that medical records were sealed.”

Breda had not expected her to tell him a story, but he had not expected that answer either. “They are, but your commendations aren’t.” He stepped forward to show her, but she shifted, pushing the file a little farther from him, and he thought better of it. “You received the Führer’s Cross for being wounded in the line of duty in 1908,” he said. She would have been nineteen. It was something he had known but had not considered before. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”

She did not move but she watched him. His stomach hardened. He had thought that fifteen years of working in the same unit had built certain bonds of trust, but he might have assumed too much.

Then she smiled and said, “I should never have received it in the first place. It was friendly fire.”

He nodded. Hawkeye's not wearing the Cross on her dress uniform made more sense if she did not think she deserved it. Still, she had been nineteen. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

Nineteen years old. She had not even graduated. He knew because during the first year they had worked together, she had run back and forth between the academy and headquarters, somehow managing to balance classes and work and Roy Mustang. Breda had graduated in 1907 and still had not seen live combat for seven more years. “Do you know who—”

“Yes,” she said in that tone that let him know she would say no more.

He wondered who she was protecting from him. It could have been Elise Holfer who had done it, the very woman whose history had sent him digging through Hawkeye’s.

No. It couldn’t because there was only one person she guarded with such determination. But the realization left him with more questions.

“You weren’t looking for my commendations,” Hawkeye said.

“No, Ma’am,” he said, allowing the subject to drop. “I was looking for information on your time at the Academy. I found this.” He held out the photograph to her, and she took it from him. “I thought there might be more, but there’s nothing.” He had been researching in circles.

Hawkeye stared at the photograph where she stood in the front row and flipped it over to read the description someone had stamped onto the back: “24th Sniper Training Division, 16 February 1908.”

When she turned it back over, he tapped a face in the back row. “That’s her. That’s our girl.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh. That…” She pressed a hand to her lips. “Oh.”

“Do you remember anything from your time in Ishval? Anything at all.”

It was a foolish question. Hawkeye and Elise Holfer may have gone in together, but a training division, especially one of snipers, would have been divided upon arrival. The soldiers would have been sent where they were needed, into other divisions, and not kept together. Still, he knew from experience how gossip circulated through camps, so he needed to ask. 

Hawkeye took a deep breath, and her face fell into her typical, impassive expression. “No. Nothing.”

“What about from training?”

She shook her head. “No.” Then she handed him the photograph. “I’m sorry.”

Breda sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Why haven’t you pulled her file?”

He clicked his tongue. “There is one page on her in this whole building. Can you believe that?” 

That one page had told him that she was discharged soon after returning from Ishval. A General Discharge Under Conditions Other than Honourable, or, as Havoc called it “Discharged Because Your Superior Knows You’re a Bastard but Doesn't Have Enough Evidence to Request a Court-Martial.” Then her records had been sealed and moved without any indication as to where they had gone. “She doesn’t even appear in census records,” he said.

“Where does a person hide from census records in this country?” Hawkeye asked.

Breda could not answer. Amestrian censuses occurred every five years, and they were organised and meticulous. Unless Elise Holfer had been hiding in someone’s cellar since 1908, she would have been counted. Where in Amestris could she have been?

He gasped. It was so easy. “Major, you’re brilliant.”

“Am I?”

He grinned. “She wasn’t hiding from the census in Amestris. She wasn’t in Amestris at all.” 

He grabbed a notepad and a pen. The last census had concluded in May of 1920, which meant he needed to look at all immigration records from June of that year to the present. There were thousands of border crossings, and she had to have passed through one of them. If she hadn’t—he would think later about what he would do if she hadn’t. He would start in the North. Falman could help him when he went back to Briggs and—

“Captain,” Hawkeye said, and he stopped scribbling notes. “I actually came to ask if you could do something.”

He did not know how much time he had to take on another task. General Mustang expected something substantial Friday evening and there were too many immigration records to check over the next two days, but he nodded.

She pulled a business card from her coat pocket and passed it to him.

He read the name at the top and nodded. The general wanted him to run another investigation. “When does he need this by?”

“He doesn’t.”

His head snapped up, and he watched her for some explanation. He considered it unusual, to say the least, that she would ask Breda to run an investigation outside of Mustang’s orders. Her face was a mask of practised stoicism, though, so he sighed. Perhaps it was personal. 

“Am I checking up on your boyfriends now, Major?” He reread the card, then looked around at the mess he had created in the archives. “This is kind of my priority right now.”

“I understand.”

He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he wouldn’t have any time before she and the general left. “So I probably won’t have anything until you get back from Central.”

“That’s fine.” She nodded and added, “Thank you.” She promised to ask someone from the cafeteria to keep bringing him coffee and food until he went home, which he doubted would be before the next morning, and then she left.

He read over the business card again. He had no idea who “David Bauer, PhD” was. And, to be honest, Breda had always assumed there was something between Hawkeye and Mustang. Then again, he had proven himself wrong about that relationship once that day, so perhaps he did not know Hawkeye as well as he had thought.

Good for her, anyway. She deserved to be happy. Havoc was Breda’s best friend, and he had been since their time in the academy, but it was a little ridiculous that the office clown was the only one in their unit who was married.

He dropped the card into his pocket and returned to his notepad. First, Tolna. It was the largest border town in the North, and one of the officers stationed there had lost several favours to him in a game of poker some years earlier. Then he’d check Verpelet, Then Bickse. If he could find where and when Elise Holfer had reentered Amestris, he could discover where she had been and with whom she had been. He could turn Madam Christmas’s hazy whispers into hard facts.

* * *

As a boy, he had thought his older brother the smartest, strongest person in the world. Their father had left before Alphonse could idolise him, and Edward had filled that role. There had been no problem Edward could not solve, no fight he could not win, except for those fights against Alphonse. Those Edward had almost always lost.

Then, when they had grown older, Alphonse had watched his brother fail, over and over, and still stand up and come back, smarter and stronger than he had been before. He had defied supernatural odds. He had fought monsters. He had gambled everything against the highest power in existence, and he had won. So Alphonse found it strange to see his brother so routed by something as mundane as money. 

“Mei and I could help,” he suggested when he and Edward sat in the meeting hall. 

They didn’t have much. They had left most of their things behind when they’d fled Xing on Saturday, and their bank accounts were inaccessible due to politics and a railroad blockade. Still, if all four of them pooled their resources, they could figure out something.

Edward shook his head. “No, I don’t want you to do that.”

“Ed—”

“No,” Edward said, his eyes following the men and women who stood milling about the room. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you want.” He looked at Alphonse. “I mean it. Years, if you like.” He turned away. “But one day, you two might want to leave and find your own place for your own family. You’re going to need to afford that.”

One of the councilmen called the meeting to order, and people began to file into the rows of wooden chairs. Gunther, a lean young man with whom Edward and Alphonse had attended primary school, sat on Edward’s other side and murmured a congratulation before asking Alphonse how he had been. Alphonse did not have time to answer before the councilman banged a gavel on a table at the front of the room and called for quiet. 

Under the reading of the minutes from the last meeting and a recitation of the evening’s agenda, Alphonse leaned into Edward and whispered, “You’ll pay us back.”

“What if we don’t?” Edward whispered back. “I’ve already said I’ll think about talking to Mustang, and I will.” Then he sank into his chair, his eyelids already dropping with boredom. “But thanks.”

Alphonse stared at his hands. If transmuting currency weren’t illegal, he would do it. He would do it the second they got back to the house. But it was illegal, and he knew it would contribute to rising inflation, making the problem worse for everyone. Still, he wished. And he wished he could do more than sit and offer—

“And Alphonse Elric is back from Xing,” the councilman said. Alphonse looked up to see the entire room staring at him. “Alphonse stand up.”

Alphonse did not move, and then Edward, grinning like mad, elbowed him in the ribs, and he jumped to his feet.

“What was it like there?” the councilman asked.

Alphonse looked around. Most of the people in town had never travelled as far as East City, and they watched him with expectations of exotic stories from the East, tales of the Emperor and palaces and fabulous riches. All he could think of, though, were his last two months there. Of people he had thought friends ignoring him in the halls and once-supported initiatives meeting with stony silence. Of rumours even Ling, in the infinite power his rank afforded him, had been unable to stop. He remembered Mei sobbing after a meeting with one of her uncles and refusing to tell him what had been said until two days later. Then Lan Fan waking them in the night and stealing them from the palace to the airfield where the few people who had not turned against them waited to say goodbye. He thought of trying for half a year to hold together an alliance until the Amestrian government could find someone more experienced to fill his position. Of failing.

So he said, “Great.” When no one looked away, he knew his answer was unsatisfactory, and he added, “Very interesting.” 

He glanced at Edward, who watched him with a furrowed brow. While the story had been a source of hilarity to his brother, Edward also understood that parts of it were painful, and he did not want it to be common knowledge any more than Alphonse did.

The councilman nodded at Alphonse, encouraging him to continue, and he scrambled for something positive to say. The first thing he thought of was, “Good food.” He dropped into his seat and bowed his head.

When the meeting resumed, Edward leaned in and said, “‘Good food?’”

“What was I supposed to say?” Alphonse hissed back. He couldn’t exactly tell the councilman it had been just lovely, thank you, that is until he had lost the goodwill of the Xingese clan leaders and found himself exiled. Almost every clan, each in their own vibrant and unique way, hated him and his wife. Yes, it had been just wonderful until he had ruined his career and Mei’s life.

Edward shrugged. “Something other than ‘good food.’”

The councilman cleared his throat. “Moving onto the assignation of crop rotations—”

“If someone tells me I have to plant rye again,” a burly man cried while jumping to his feet, “I’m gonna—”

“If you try to make me grow spring wheat,” someone else started before half the room was standing and yelling over each other.

Alphonse watched the chaos bubble, and he looked at Edward, who had somehow sunk lower into his chair and crossed his arms. “What is happening?”

“Crop inflation,” Edward said. “It was fine before the border closed and the distribution centre…” He paused and looked around before saying, “Burned down.”

Alphonse nodded. Edward had filled him in on that.

“But Xing is where most of the trade went,” Edward continued. “Now crops are going to start rotting in the ground because no one can sell to cities because there’s way too much already on the market. And if they can’t sell, they can’t pay off the debts they took out to buy heavy machinery to grow more crops—”

“I know that,” Alphonse said. He had grown up in Resembool too, and spending the past few years in a palace hadn't put him out of touch. City people and the wealthy were still feeling the joys of the decade of prosperity. But the working classes, and farming communities in particular, were beginning to feel the strain of the upper classes’ expanding affluence. It seemed to be a problem everywhere, not just Amestris. “Why are they yelling at each other?”

Edward sighed and shifted in his seat. “The council came up with a plan about a week ago. Have public food storage, can and preserve everything, and then control next harvest by assigning what certain farms should grow.”

It was a decent enough idea for a small town to implement. It would mean everyone could eat, even if a depression or famine hit. Greater variety in export from Resembool would lead to more people's ability to sell what they grew. 

“And everyone agreed,” Edward said. “But then…” He shrugged.

“But then they realised that they had agreed to being told what to grow,” Alphonse finished. It was a terrible upheaval of lives and an extreme risk. A wheat farmer would not know where to begin with barley, and asking him to make the switch could ruin him. No one would agree to that.

Edward nodded, then opened his mouth to say more, but he was cut off.

“None of this would even be a problem if Mustang cared about what is happening here!” a man roared above the din, and a few called out agreements. “But he doesn’t.”

Edward straightened in his seat, perhaps ready to jump up and say something to shoot that idea down, but another person shouted, “You heard them on the radio! He’s a liar!”

Edward sat frozen, and Alphonse leaned in to ask, “What are they talking about?”

“No idea.”

Gunther looked down at them and said, “You don’t know? It was two days ago! It’s been all over the news!”

That would have been when Winry was in labour.

Edward scowled. “We’ve been a little busy.”

Gunther sat, looking abashed, and said, “Right.” He twisted his cap in his hands. “Some nutcase took over all the stations and accused Mustang and others, like that Armstrong lady up North and the Führer himself, of killing Führer Bradley and overthrowing the government.”

“What?” Edward asked, and when Gunther started to repeat himself, he said, “No, I heard you. Tell me everything.”

Alphonse half-listened to the story, trying to breathe and calm his racing heart. Whoever those people were, they were almost right. It was true that Mustang had plotted to kill the Führer and overthrow the government. Alphonse and Edward knew because they’d been there. They had helped.

When Gunther recited the signing off message, “an Amestrian future for an Amestrian people,” Edward grabbed Alphonse’s hand and said, “Al, we gotta go.”

As they pushed through the throngs of people crowding the row of chairs, Edward said, “We have to do something.”

“Like what?” Alphonse asked.

His brother shook his head. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Alphonse rolled his eyes. Edward lived his life in a perpetual state of “figuring it out.”

When they reached the aisle, the councilman started banging his gavel and someone cried, “The Elrics know him. Let’s ask them!” 

Edward stopped walking and turned, grinding his teeth and hissing an expletive. 

Alphonse’s stomach churned, and his neck felt hot. The entire room watched the brothers as if they could explain what happened in Eastern Headquarters, but if their missing the radio broadcast was any indication, Edward and Alphonse knew even less than the general population did.

“Is he going to end the blockade?” a woman’s voice called.

Edward shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure he will, but—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He doesn’t really talk to me about that.” 

Alphonse could believe that they did not discuss politics or economics often. Edward had once claimed his relationship with Mustang was based on two things: alchemy and a healthy, mutual hatred. 

“Are the rumours true?” someone else called.

“Did he plot to kill Führer Bradley?”

“Why doesn’t he do something to help us?”

Edward held up his hands and took a step back from the barrage of questions. He had learned about the radio broadcast seconds earlier, and he was more interested in what the closing line had meant than what the overall message had meant for Resembool’s economy or Mustang’s campaign. 

Alphonse, though, felt the queasiness in his stomach tighten, felt his shoulders and hands tense. He knew they needed someone to blame, but they had found the wrong person. General Mustang had only ever tried. So when someone else asked how they could even trust Mustang, Alphonse shouted, “I can’t believe this!”

The room quieted, and he continued, “He’s the reason the railroad exists at all!” He held out his arms and looked around the meeting hall, renovated since his childhood, gleaming with new paint and sporting a roof that no longer leaked. “The East was the poorest, most underdeveloped region of the country when he arrived fifteen years ago. Remember where we were after the civil war?” 

Some people near him shifted. It was not just the Rockbells who had been lost in the conflict. Farms too close to the Ishvalan border had burned, and parts of Resembool had endured bombings. An influx of refugees had strained the regional infrastructure. Alphonse had been a child, and he still remembered listening to radio announcements and hiding under his desk during drills at school.

“What did he say?” someone asked, and another called, “We can’t hear you!”

Alphonse grabbed a chair, pulled it into the aisle, and jumped on it so his voice would carry over the people around him and not through them. “As long as Mustang’s been here, there’s been minimal conflict,” he said, his shoulders relaxing and his chest lightening. Alphonse had spent months making instant decisions, defending policies, and turning negative sentiments into decisive action. Edward did not think that way, but he did. “There’s been no fighting on our borders for the last eight years, which is unprecedented in this country.”

He pointed to the newly-installed light fixtures hanging from the vaulted rafters. “Every building has electricity, every home has wireless radios…And all of that is possible because of the desert trade route he opened.” He threw one arm to the side. “He didn’t do that for himself. He did it for the East. He did it for you!”

Alphonse held up his forefingers and said, “He didn’t start the blockade. The government of Menimras did. And he can’t send official delegates to negotiate its end, because only the führer can do that. But he might have that power next January, and if he wins this election, I know he’ll do everything he can to reopen the railway.” If Alphonse could not trust Mustang to do it for selfless reasons, he could trust him to do it for selfish ones. The trade route with Xing was one of his most significant accomplishments. He would do anything not to see it fail.

“I know you’re scared right now,” he said, and he pressed a hand to his chest. “I would be too. But are you going to let fear and some lunatic’s rantings turn you against the one person who has been fighting for the East for fifteen years?” He took a deep breath. “And I know it’s a lot to ask for you to hold on for one more year. To pull together and go with the council’s plan for one year. But you can trust him. Mustang is a lot of things, but he is good for his word.

“General Mustang has not forgotten about this town or ones like it, and he won’t forget. And when he’s the Führer—” Alphonse stopped and looked around. 

The room was silent, and it had been for some time as everyone had watched him speak. And he stood on a chair. He stood on a chair and lectured them and somehow he had thought that was a good idea. He had not lived there for years, and he stood on a chair and lectured the entire building, and they probably thought he was overzealous and pretentious, and he needed to get down. He needed to get down right that second and leave and never show his face again because what had he been thinking? “Yeah, he’ll get it done,” he rushed. Then he jumped off the chair and ran for the door.

He grabbed his umbrella from the box on the porch of the meeting hall and popped it open while he heard Edward, still inside, say, “We’ve got a newborn to get back to.” 

Alphonse rushed down the path, as fast as he could without slipping in mud. He heard splashing behind him and Edward calling, “Al!” He stopped and waited for his brother to catch up.

When Edward did, he said, “You know, he should hire you to write his stump speeches.”

Alphonse pressed the heel of his hand into his eye. “I looked like an idiot.” A self-important idiot who thought he had the right to tell a whole town he had not lived in for years how to think and how to vote and—

“I’m sure I’m the only one who thought that,” Edward said, and he grinned. “And I only thought it at the end when you completely forgot what you were saying.”

Alphonse groaned, and the queasiness came back.

“I’m serious!” Edward said, and he slapped Alphonse’s back. “That was awesome. You could do that for a living.”

“Yell at people?” he asked.

“No,” Edward said, and pointed toward the meeting hall. “Politics. That was politics.”

That made it worse. Could Edward not see that made it worse? Alphonse turned and walked down the road. He wanted to go home, to forget it had happened. To forget that he had enjoyed speaking like that, that he had enjoyed being in Xing too. The first few months had been incredible, navigating problems and etiquette and protocol and finding creative solutions. He had kept the alliance intact, and the Imperial Ministers happy, until the day he hadn’t.

He could hear Edward following, so he said, “I think I destroyed any career in politics this weekend.”

“It was your first time doing something like that officially,” Edward said. “And Mustang won’t even care in a few months—”

“I’ll care,” Alphonse snapped. “I’ll care because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hold the alliance, I couldn’t save face for Mei, I couldn’t keep her own family from turning against her. I can’t do anything except stand on a chair and shout half-baked ideas.”

He heard Edward sigh, and he looked over at him. “What?”

Edward shrugged. “When you get like this, I can’t even talk to you. I either have to physically fight you or wait for Winry to scream some sense into you.” Then he punched Alphonse in the arm.

“Ow!” Alphonse rubbed at the spot his brother had hit. “That actually hurt.”

“I know what it’s like to mess up,” Edward said, and he kept walking through the rain. Somewhere behind the storm clouds, the sun was setting, and the sky darkened to deep charcoal.

Alphonse tried to swallow the pain in the back of his throat. His brother had always blamed himself for that day when Alphonse had lost his body in a violent transmutation and when Edward had lost his arm and leg. “You didn’t mess up alone.”

“Yeah, I did,” Edward said. “And guess what? I fixed it!” He shook his left leg, the one that was still automail. “Well, mostly.” He put a hand on Alphonse’s shoulder. “The people here like you, and they want to hear what you have to say. And you’re good at saying things. And the things you say are usually smart.” He took his hand back and shrugged. “I’m just saying you might be cut out for this.”

Warmth flooded Alphonse’s chest as he remembered what it had felt like to wake up every day and do the most good for the most people. “You know, I get what Mustang is trying to do.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I was helping people. I couldn’t always see them, but I was still helping.” He had kept Imperial Ministers in favour of the railroad until the blockade had started, even as their opinion had turned against Amestrian involvement in Xingese affairs and against him. He had helped keep the trade route running. He was proud of that. “It was getting ten and giving back eleven, just like we talked about. And I thought that maybe that was the way to do it. That was the way to help the most people and overturn equivalent exchange.”

Edward frowned. “You know, Winry always says Mustang and I can’t stand each other because we’re too similar. But I think you might be more like him than I am.” He grinned. “The good parts.”

Alphonse laughed. It felt good to laugh. “I’m surprised to hear you say he has good parts.”

Edward rolled his eyes. “He might have one or two good qualities. Maybe three.” He jammed his finger into Alphonse’s chest. “Don’t you dare tell him I said that.”

Alphonse smiled. He never would.

Edward turned and started toward home again. “He’ll get over it,” he said. “Then you should seriously ask him if you can do something for his campaign.”

Alphonse watched him go, then let his umbrella fall to the side and turned his face towards the sky. The first summer after he had his body back, he had snuck outside to stand just so. He had closed his eyes and just felt the rain, felt the fat, warm drops hitting his skin with gentle pressure, felt his clothes and hair sticking to his skin. The rain made Edward grouchy, it made Winry tired, and it made Mustang useless. But Alphonse loved the rain. It made him feel alive.

“Al! You’re gonna get sick, you moron!”

Alphonse opened his eyes, smiled, and ran after his brother. He was twenty-three. There was plenty of time to correct his mistakes.


	7. Chapter 7

Mustang’s day began with one of his least favourite activities: a telephone call with Edward Elric. He had a policy: he would take no calls from anyone named Elric or Armstrong before ten-hundred hours. But he had sent Hawkeye to pick up opera tickets for his date that night, Havoc had the day off, Breda was buried under papers in the archives, and Feury was helping Falman prepare for his return to the North. Instead, Mustang was stuck, alone, with some recent Academy graduate who was filling in for Havoc and unaware of how Mustang wanted his office to function.

He held the receiver away from his face while Fullmetal screeched at him. He demanded to know why Mustang hadn’t told him about the radio broadcast, and Mustang had explained he had assumed the family would be busy with the arrival of his new baby. And how was the baby, Fullmetal?

“Fine. Thanks. It’s a girl,” Edward said before adding, “You should have told me about anything related to what happened here. I’m the one who found the damn paper.”

Mustang reminded Edward he couldn’t be read in on military affairs anymore. Edward had retired—had made a show of turning in his watch, even though the military had been willing to keep him as a researcher. He was a civilian.

Then Edward said the strangest thing Mustang had ever heard him say. “I want to come back. I want to come back and be a State Alchemist again.”

Mustang looked at the receiver. Was it working correctly? Was Edward Elric’s brain working correctly? “One more time?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me,” Edward said.

Mustang leaned back in his chair. Edward had to know he couldn’t return. “That’s not feasible.” 

Edward said, “People reenlist all the time,” as if that solved everything, which it didn’t.

“Sure,” Mustang allowed. “And if you wanted to reenlist, you could. But you can’t be a State Alchemist.”

“Why the hell not?” Edward said.

Mustang shook his head. “You’d have to pass the exam again.”

“The exam is a joke,” Edward said. “I know it was tough for you, but I could pass it in my sleep.”

Mustang sighed. Edward was not thinking. “Did you forget about the practical?” That pesky practical, in which candidates had to display their alchemical abilities for the State Alchemist board. It was difficult for any alchemist to pass, but for Edward, who had surrendered his ability to perform alchemy, it was impossible.

Edward, true to nature, was not to be deterred. “Couldn’t you do something about that? You’re on the board.”

Mustang scoffed. “Do you think I just use my position to—”

“Yes,” Edward said.

He furrowed his brow. “I didn’t even—”

“Yes.”

Mustang sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. That was why he didn’t take calls from Elrics in the morning. “Look, you could reenlist properly. You might be able to keep your rank, depending on what the Human Resources Council decides in your case, and I’ll make sure you get put into clerical work, specifically working for the board.” Edward could read and poke holes in all research submissions. He’d like that. “You’d have all the access you used to—”

“I don’t want to be a soldier, General. I want to be a State Alchemist.”

Mustang dropped his hand to the table. “That’s a distinction without a difference, Fullmetal.” This wasn’t necessarily true. The work was different, the pay was different, but State Alchemists were soldiers. They held military ranks for a reason. He frowned. “Why do you want to come back so suddenly?”

There was no response, and for a moment, Mustang thought he had hung up. “Edward?”

“Never mind,” Edward blurted. “Forget I asked.” Then he did hang up.

Mustang placed the receiver back in its cradle and wondered what Edward was thinking. Why would he want to come back after so many years? Was it a matter of inclusion in the investigation into the “Amestrian Freedom Army”? Did he miss the research? The grants?

“Ridiculous.” Whatever Edward’s reasons, if he had said to forget, then Mustang would forget. 

A knock sounded at his door, and he called, “Come in.”

He turned his head as Hawkeye stepped into the office with a white envelope in her hand. “Sir—”

“You’re back,” he said, his shoulders relaxing as he realized there would again be someone competent in the office.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “I have—”

He pointed to his telephone. “I just finished talking with Edward Elric,” he said, letting his displeasure ring through the last two words.

She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and said, “I’m sorry, Sir. I’ll speak with the corporal.”

He nodded. At least someone knew how his office needed to run. He looked out the window again. “Do you have the tickets?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said.

“Just put them on my desk.” Depending on how much Madame and Vanessa had learned over the past few days, he’d have much to discuss at the opera. That made him think of Resembool, though, and of Edward’s odd request. He must have known returning was impossible, and he must have known it was a stupid question. So why had he asked it?

“Sir,” Hawkeye said in that tone of hers, and he knew she had seen the stack of blank reports on his desk. “These need to be typed and postmarked by tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll get it done,” he said. He understood her concern. She would have to type them.

“I can’t work overtime today,” she added.

Alright," he sighed. Given his history of procrastination, she was right to have apprehensions. But he had already told her that he'd finish, and it wouldn't be fair to keep her while he completed his work.

“Have you called General Armstrong, Sir?”

He ran a hand down his face. “No.” He had no intention of calling her. Until he knew more about the radio hijackers, there would be nothing to discuss. They could complain, he supposed, but it wouldn’t solve anything and would be a waste of time for both of them.

A frown tugged at Hawkeye’s mouth.

“What?”

“With all due respect, Sir,” she said, and he knew she was about to say something he would not like, “I think you’re being incredibly stupid.”

There. Something he did not like at all. He clenched his jaw and grabbed the first report.

“Sir,” she continued, “this is probably as worrisome to her as it is to you, and if you share leads and ideas, it may help.”

He uncapped a pen. It was true that if he shared the very little he knew with Armstrong, it would help her. Then, if she had her own people following Mustang’s leads, she might find answers, she might find the organization. Then, when she announced her bid for Führer—and he was astonished she had not done so yet—she could use that as a great accomplishment. She might even thank him in her acceptance speech.

“If she knows where you’re looking, she can look in different—”

“Thank you for your input,” he said. A sharp pain shot through his fingers and he winced. “I don’t want to take any telephone calls until the afternoon.”

“Sir—” Hawkeye started.

“That’s all, Major,” he said as his thumb twitched. He looked up at her, but she was watching his hands. He expected her to reach out and grab one like she sometimes did when they were alone, or to fight him on his dismissal like she did when she disagreed with him.

Instead, she nodded and left him, because those things were too intimate.

For the first time in a long time, the implication of the law and the loneliness of his position settled like a chill on him. He rubbed at his hand, working from the centre of the palm to the ends of his fingers like she would have done.

He was determined to sit at his desk, fulfil his promise by completing the reports, and be maudlin for the rest of the day, so when his telephone rang for the second time that morning, he was quite annoyed.

“It’s Vogel, Sir,” Hawkeye said. “Do you want me to tell him you’re busy?”

He had been waiting for a return call from the Minister to the Führer for days, and she knew he had been waiting, so he said, “No, put him through.”

While he waited for the lines to connect, Mustang thought that the Führer’s message would give him something to tell General Armstrong when he called her back, which he had been avoiding. He would have more when Breda spoke with him, though, so maybe he would wait until then. He could check in with Breda when Feury and Falman returned after lunch, which reminded Mustang that he needed to finalize the latter’s return transfer to the North. To streamline that process, he could always have Hawkeye place the telephone call to General Armstrong while he finished the paperwork. In all honesty, his task would be the more distasteful one. But Hawkeye had made it clear that those reports were to be his priority. He needed to finish them for her sake. It was unfortunate, but even with news from the Führer’s office, there was no possibility of calling General Armstrong that day.

The line clicked, and he said, “Vogel. I’m glad we can finally talk about what happened on Monday.”

Vogel cleared his throat. “Actually, Sir, I’m not calling about that. Well, I am, but I’m not.”

Mustang cracked his neck, already finished with the conversation.

“Sir,” Vogel continued. “I’m here with Colonel James Rochester. He wanted me to make an introduction. He has something to ask you.”

Mustang fell into his chair with a heavy sigh. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

“It’s actually not Colonel anymore, General Mustang,” a new man, this Lieutenant Rochester, said. “I’m retired from service.”

Mustang let his head fall back, and he looked at the ceiling.

“Sir, I worked in an espionage unit under General Maden for six years,” Lieutenant Rochester continued.

Mustang hummed. He knew Maden, who ran the West. He was stiff and humourless, but he had maintained peace with Creta since the power shift in Central on the Promised Day. 

“In light of recent events,” Rochester continued, “Parliament and the Führer’s office have commissioned me to put together an extra-government, extra-military organization for investigation and espionage internally and abroad.”

Mustang sat up. “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”

Rochester did. It was meant to have two departments, homeland and international. The government would provide the funding, but Rochester’s organization would not operate at its behest. International espionage would work the way international espionage was supposed to work. But the internal department would instead serve the interests of the Amestrian people. It would have investigative power over members of government, including the Führer. “No one should be above the law,” Rochester explained. “Not even lawmakers.”

Mustang agreed. “I’m surprised Parliament is supporting this,” he said, “since I imagine it’s not in all of their best interests.”

Rochester laughed. “Well, Sir. A lot of them are opposed, but Richard Kaufman is pushing for it, and he’s the leader of the plurality, so…”

It was Kaufman’s project. He could already hear Charlie bemoaning how clever of a project it was, one so opposed to corruption, and how good it would be for Kaufman’s image. That made Mustang much more interested to know his role in Rochester’s plan.

“We’re recruiting people to get in on the ground floor of this,” Rochester said. “And you have a couple of people working for you who we feel would be excellent assets.”

Mustang’s hands began to ache again as he wondered who Rochester meant to take. Anyone on his team would be invaluable to such an operation, just as they were invaluable to him in East City.

“Kain Fuery and Heymans Breda,” Rochester said. Mustang slammed his shaking hand on the desk to still it and bit back a harsh refusal when Rochester continued, “We’ve yet to reach out, but we wanted to talk with you about them. Their work ethic. Overall performance. Things like that.”

His chest tightened when he realized there would be no paperwork to refuse, no transfer requests to deny. If they chose to retire to join that organization, it would be wrong to stop them.

“We understand that Captain Breda has been involved in multiple internal investigations over the years. And seven months ago, Warrant Officer Fuery patented a listening device that we’re planning to use. We think both of them would make excellent contributions.”

He remembered every investigation. He remembered the listening device that was as small as a deck of cards. He understood why Rochester wanted them. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off his returning headache, and he thought that, perhaps, it was the best thing for both of them. And it would be best for the country, having two such competent people working to catch a gang of terrorists. Still, he had hoped to accomplish that himself with their help. When the Amestrian Freedom Army was apprehended, would Kaufman get the credit for pushing to create the organization that had done it?

Yet his idealism, and perhaps naïveté, reminded him that some things transcended politics and that the safety of his country was one of those things.

So when Rochester asked about their characters and their performances, Mustang was honest. Then he hung up, and he waited. He finished the reports, he handed them off, and he watched the clock until he was confident that Breda and Feury had received calls of their own.

He stepped into the main office and found that Feury had returned. So he called, “Feury, go grab Breda, and then I want to see both of you.” When Feury just looked at him, he added, “Now.”

Feury dashed from the office and Hawkeye, without looking up from the typewriter at her desk, asked, “Is everything alright, Sir?”

He frowned. Nothing was alright, but there was little he could do. “That remains to be seen.”

He watched her type, the clicking of keys pausing only when the carriage dinged and she pushed it back to the left. Her typing speed reminded him that she had not wanted to stay late, and he asked, somewhat afraid that the answer would be blond and tall and named Neumann, “Do you have plans tonight?”

“Rebecca is still in town,” she said, but she did not elaborate. 

Perhaps she was annoyed with him for dismissing her out of hand earlier. Still, he smiled. Thank goodness for Rebecca and her ability to monopolize Hawkeye’s time. “That’s fun.”

“That remains to be seen, Sir.” She smiled back at him, and he knew he was forgiven.

“Don’t wait for the clock,” he told her. There was nothing else he needed that day that he could not do himself.

“Thank you,” she said as the door opened and Feury came in with Breda trailing behind.

“Come in,” Mustang said as he strode back into his office and went to the two sofas in the middle of the room. He leaned against the arm of one and gestured in front of him to the other. “Sit down.”

Feury sat first, blinking rapidly. Breda brushed his hands on his trousers and lowered himself onto the cushions.

They knew why they were in his office. Good. It would save time. “You’ve both received your offers by now.”

Breda blurted, “I didn’t say anything definitive—” and at the same time Feury said, “I haven’t really accepted—”

Mustang held up a hand to quiet them. He needed no interruptions. “They called me earlier asking about you. Naturally, I gave both of you an excellent recommendation.”

Breda and Feury exchanged a quick glance but said nothing. He was glad of it. The more they spoke, the more difficult the conversation would be.

He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m going to be candid. You’d both be stupid not to go.”

Breda shifted and tried, “Sir—”

“I’m going to finish,” he said, as his head ached and a heaviness settled on his chest. “Then you’re both going to leave, and you’re going to let me know that you’ve accepted, preferably sometime tomorrow. Then you’re going to hand in your two weeks.” The pressure on his chest increased when they continued to be silent, so he barked, “Are we clear?” 

Both men nodded.

“Good.” He took a deep breath. “You’re good men and good soldiers, and you’ve both been invaluable to this unit. It’s better for me if you stay, but it’s better for the country if you don’t.” 

And wasn’t that the very thing for which he had always worked? Not for power; his quest had never been about amassing influencing or seizing control for the sake of having it. Since the day he had stood in the middle of an Ishvalan battlefield and stared down Führer Bradley, his entire purpose had been taking that childish dream of making the country work for its citizens and forcing it into fruition. He needed to do what was best for Amestris.

He could start, he thought, by calling General Armstrong as Hawkeye had suggested. He would call her first thing the next morning. For the moment, though, he needed to finish speaking with his men who sat waiting.

“You could do so much more working with Rochester,” Mustang continued. They could use their specific talents daily, not only when the need arose. Still, even if they were employed elsewhere, he trusted their loyalty would be absolute. “But Eastern Security is still my jurisdiction, so if he tries to pull something without me…” He smiled. “Use your judgement.”

* * *

The bar was dingy and dark, the tables rocked, and Riza had always suspected that the smudged date on the framed liquor license was long expired, but Rebecca dragged her to it whenever she could. It sat equidistant from the Military Academy and the university, so Rebecca had thought it the perfect place for meeting boys. When they were older, she had claimed the bar had the best beers on draught in the city. That evening, though, Rebecca had met Riza outside of Eastern Headquarters, packed her into Leo’s automobile, and insisted that they had to go. It was tradition, she said.

In the end, Riza sat on a dilapidated chair and stared at the liquor license on the wall. The first two beers buzzed in her head, and she was becoming increasingly certain that the license had not changed in the seventeen years they had been coming to the bar. Those smudges were the same, and those watermarks were the same. How had the place avoided a shutdown?

Rebecca sat in the chair across from her and slid another mug across the table. She was pretty, with her hair styled in a fashionable bob and under a dark grey cloche hat with a yellow ribbon. She wore a nice dress, nicer than Riza could have afforded if she saved for an entire year. Rebecca had offered to fill out Riza’s wardrobe before, but Riza had refused. She had seen Rebecca’s definition of a full wardrobe, and Riza did not have room in her whole flat, much less in her closet, for as many shoes as she suspected Rebecca would buy for her.

Riza accepted the drink and decided it would be her last. She still had work in the morning. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave with Leo,” she said. Rebecca’s husband had left for the South soon after promising a sizable donation to the General’s campaign on Tuesday. Though Rebecca was an active board member of his steel company, she had opted to leave on a later train.

Rebecca shrugged. “I want to spend time with you, and you don’t get many days off, so…” She smiled over the rim of her mug. “Here I am.” She took a long drink then said, “We’ve talked about me all night. You go.”

Riza stared into her beer. There wasn’t much to tell.

“The last I heard,” Rebecca prompted, “you had stopped seeing that one guy, the book editor. Who’s next?”

That’s what Rebecca always wanted to know. Riza still had little to tell. She had little time to date and even less desire to. Instead, her life stayed in permanent limbo, seeing people when she was lonely and waiting for someone she would never have.

She wondered how quickly the General had fallen asleep at the opera that night, and she took a long drink to settle the hardness in her throat and chest.

“Seriously?” Rebecca said. “Riza, that was a year ago. A year, Riza. A whole—”

“How long are you here?” Riza asked, because drunk Rebecca was forgetful and easily distracted.

Rebecca sighed. “I don’t know. I might stay in East City for a while. See my mom.” She tapped a syncopated rhythm on the side of her mug. “Maybe I’ll redecorate the flat here. I’m not sure right now.”

Riza watched her. Redecorating that flat could take weeks, maybe months. Rebecca would not stay away from the South for that long, not with board meetings to attend and parties to plan. Something was wrong.

Rebecca leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Leo’s talking about having kids.”

Riza furrowed her brow. “I thought he didn’t want kids.”

“That’s what he told me before we got married! But now…” Rebecca huffed and moved back in her chair. “I think he’s getting old and contemplating his own mortality or something.” She placed a hand on her chest. “You know me. I’ve never wanted that. I’d be so bad at it. Not like you,” she said, and then she wagged one finger. “Nice job, changing the subject. You’ll be a great mother, but I need to work on finding you a man first.”

Riza pressed her lips together. “Not right now.”

“I just want you to be happy!”

“I am happy.”

“No one who lives like you do is happy,” Rebecca said.

Riza glared at her. “Maybe a new conversation would make me happy.”

“I’m going to set you up with someone. I know plenty of handsome, rich men. There’s one I think you’d really like—”

“Do you remember Elise Holfer?” Riza asked. If Rebecca wouldn’t change the subject, she would. Breda’s investigation seemed a good enough starting point.

“Who?”

“Elise Holfer,” Riza repeated. “She and I were in sniper training together.” If they had gone to the academy at the same time, Rebecca might remember things Riza had forgotten.

Rebecca groaned and rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t remember Elise Holfer. Anyway,” she continued, “while I’m in town, I’m going to pull some bachelors from my social circle and—Wait.” Rebecca stopped for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Elise Holfer? Wasn’t she the one who threw a brick at a protestor? Then got in a fistfight with him?”

“What?” Riza remembered the protests, the flood of academics and students who had blocked entrances to military buildings while they railed against the unpopular war and the deployment of the State Alchemists. She remembered keeping her head down and pushing through the crowd, thinking that they didn’t understand how the war was vital to keeping the peace. She remembered arriving in Ishval and realizing within days that the students had been right and she had been wrong. She had no recollection of that particular incident, however.

“You know,” Rebecca said with a wave of her hand. “She threw a brick at a protestor and then got in a fistfight with him.”

Riza took a deep breath. “Rebecca.”

“It was a few months before you left, just after the winter holiday.” Rebecca took a deep drink and continued, “A bunch of university students were outside the academy, and someone—and I’m positive now that her name was Elise Holfer—threw a brick—”

“Right,” Riza said. She might not remember, but she understood the gist of the story. “Do you know what happened to them? To Elise Holfer and the protestor?”

Rebecca tapped her chin. “I don’t think anything happened to her. Maybe she had to polish boots or something. But I’m pretty sure he was arrested.” She leaned forward. “What does this have to do with your dating life?”

Riza shook her head. “It doesn’t. It’s for work.” Someone may have removed all of Holfer’s military history, but a civilian arrest record was a good lead. She’d have to tell Breda in the morning.

Rebecca threw her hands up. “This is why you have no dating life.” She jabbed her finger at Riza’s chest. “As I was saying, I’m going to set you up with someone.”

Riza sighed. Perhaps there would be no distracting Rebecca from her mission that night.

“You deserve a good man,” Rebecca continued, and then she pointed to the bar. “Like maybe that cute guy who’s been looking at you all night.”

“What?” Riza looked to the side where Rebecca was pointing and wondered how she had missed that. She must have been far drunker than she had realized—Then she saw him. Dark and wavy hair, frowning while speaking with another gentleman. Then he met her gaze, smiled, and raised his glass in a mock toast.

Riza snapped her head back. “Rebecca, no.” She had not imagined David Bauer did anything other than his work and acting unpleasant, but his being there made some sense; the bar was close to the university.

“You know him?” Rebecca asked while she lifted one hand to wave.

“I will kill you,” Riza hissed.

“He’s coming over.”

Before Riza could reply, David pulled over a chair from a nearby table and sat.

“I thought that was you,” He said to Riza. “I didn’t know you frequented this establishment.”

“I don’t,” she said, with more bite than she had intended. Riza had been reluctant to come to the bar that night, but after this, Rebecca would have to drag her through the doors to get her back in again.

“We used to come here all the time when we were in school,” Rebecca explained.

David nodded. “I see.”

Riza looked at the table. If she said nothing, maybe he would leave, and Rebecca would get bored, and she could go home. Something hard struck her shin under the table, and she looked up to see Rebecca staring at her with a pointed grin. Yes, Riza was going to kill her. She gestured between the two other people. “David, this is Rebecca Minter. Rebecca, this is Doctor David Bauer.”

While they shook hands, Rebecca said, “A doctor?”

“A professor,” he said.

Rebecca’s smile grew. “Even better.”

Riza cleared her throat. She could imagine all of the comments Rebecca would make about “schoolgirl fantasies” on the drive home, and she would prefer to get that part of her night over with. “We should really—”

“What do you teach?” Rebecca asked.

David glanced at Riza, cleared his throat and said, “Political psychology.”

“And how’d you come to study that?”

“Rebecca,” Riza said. She was ready to steal Rebecca’s keys and drive herself home. Or maybe call a cab. But she had left her umbrella in Rebecca’s automobile. “We need to—” She winced when Rebecca kicked her again.

David looked at Riza, then at Rebecca. “I don’t think Riza’s too interested, and I don’t want to bother you much longer.” He smiled. “I only came over to say ‘hello,’ and because my friend over there bet me ten-thousand cenz I couldn’t get one of you to give me your telephone number.”

Riza thought that perhaps braving the rain was worth the price of escape.

Rebecca laughed. “Does that line ever work?”

David shrugged. “It’s not a line. It’s ten-thousand cenz.”

Rebecca considered for a moment, then fished a pen from her purse. She grabbed a paper napkin and scribbled a series of numbers across it. Riza almost stopped her, almost told her not to do something stupid just because she and Leo were fighting, but Rebecca folded the napkin in half and handed it to David. 

“Thanks,” David said as he stood up. “Nice to meet you, Rebecca.” He smiled at Riza. “Good to see you again.” Then he left to rejoin his friend at the bar.

Riza sighed. “Rebecca, I know you and Leo—”

“I’m unavailable,” Rebecca called, much louder than necessary, “but I gave you hers!”

“Rebecca!”

She turned back to Riza and smiled. “He’s good looking.” Then she noticed the glare Riza was giving her and said, “What?”

Riza’s temperature rose. What indeed. What had Rebecca been thinking? How could she dare? Riza took a deep breath. She was too angry to have a rational conversation about it, and she needed to wait until they were both sober. “Let’s go.”

Rebecca looked toward the bar and pouted. “He’s leaving.”

“We should do the same,” Riza said, grabbing her bag and standing.

“Alright. God.” Rebecca picked up her mug. “At least let me finish this.”

Riza watched her finish that drink. Then Rebecca grabbed Riza’s and drank the remainder before patting her chest and humming with contentment.

“Are you ready?” Riza said. She wanted to go home, crawl under her covers, and squeeze her little dog. Then, in the morning, she would find Rebecca, pull her from her bed, and shoot her between the eyes.

Rebecca made a show of straightening her hat, picking up her purse, and rising with all of the drunken grace she could muster. “Ready.”

She was in no state to drive, so Riza would have to. Rebecca was far drunker than she should have been, and Riza suspected she had pulled her academy-days stunt of adding brandy to her beers. If she were that lacking in judgement, then perhaps her behaviour merited not a quick death but a stern discussion and reminder of boundaries. Riza thought with some satisfaction that Rebecca would consider the latter the worse option. She pulled Rebecca to the bar and waved the bartender over. “We’re together,” she told him.

He jerked his head toward the door. “David had me put it on his tab.”

“I don’t believe this!” Rebecca said.

Riza had to agree. It was disconcerting enough that the bartender referred to him by first name. Why had he picked up their drinks?

Then Rebecca picked up a napkin on the bar top. “He left it!”

Riza read the napkin. That was her telephone number in Rebecca’s hand—she was going to kill her—but underneath that, someone else had written, “Thanks for the cash.”

Rebecca puffed her cheeks and blew hard. “That’s so disappointing.”

Riza had to disagree. It was the best outcome to Rebecca’s shenanigans, albeit confusing.

Then Rebecca gasped and grabbed Riza’s arm. “Hurry up.” Then she dragged her to the front of the bar and out the door.

A dark green awning protected them from the rain, and under the glow of a gas lamp, David stood with one hand on the shoulder of his friend.

Rebecca charged forward, pushed the second man aside, and said, “It really wasn’t a line.”

David’s eyebrows shot up, and he smiled. “I told you. I got what I wanted.”

Rebecca crossed her arms. Then she wheeled around and smiled at Riza. “You know what? I forgot to pay my tab.” She stumbled back to the door and patted Riza on the arm as she passed. “Be right back.”

Riza understood her intentions, though, and said, “Rebecca, he got it.” 

Rebecca yanked open the door and grinned.

“Rebecca!”

“She’ll figure it out,” David said.

Riza knew that figuring it out was not Rebecca’s motivation. She would run after her, but first, she wanted an answer. She turned to David and asked, “Why did you pick it up?”

He shrugged. “You won me a lot of money. Sharing felt right.” He looked past her, toward his friend, and said, “Are you ready yet?”

His friend pushed past Riza and clapped a hand on David’s shoulder. He took a deep breath and said, “I need another minute,” before stumbling to the brick wall and leaning his forehead against it. “I’sso cool.”

“Is he going to be alright?” Riza asked. She had thought Rebecca too drunk.

“He’ll be fine,” David said.

She nodded and stared at Leo’s automobile, parked across the street and in the warm halo of a gas lamp, and wished she were inside of it and driving toward her home. She would call Rebecca in the morning and yell at her. Rebecca would have a terrible headache, but Riza wouldn’t care.

Why had he left the napkin? It was uncommonly gentlemanly, from what she knew of him. Perhaps he was disappointed, which would be no significant loss to her. Had he wanted Rebecca’s number instead? Riza’s stomach dropped.

That was another thing they would need to discuss, then. Rebecca may choose to ruin her own life, but Riza would be a terrible friend for letting her.

Where was Rebecca, anyway?

Riza turned to the door so she could look into the bar, but David was already peering through the leaded glass window.

“So,” he cleared his throat, “your friend—”

“She’s married.” The giant diamond wedding ring Rebecca wore was difficult to miss, but she didn’t know if that would be a deterrent to David.

“I noticed that.” Then, “I was going to say ‘left you.’”

“What?” Riza reached forward and threw open the door so she could run inside.

It was not so late that all customers had cleared, and many still populated low and high tables. Rebecca was not among them. She was not at the long bar running down the room, and she was not near the dartboard in the back corner.

Riza squeezed through the crowd and toward the bartender, who was filling a mug from the tap, and asked, “Did you see a woman, dark curly hair, come through here?”

He nodded to a door near the far end of the bar. “She went through the back exit about five minutes ago.”

Riza’s heart skipped. She had thought Rebecca had meant to make her wait a few minutes, not leave. The automobile was still in front, so she must have hailed a cab. And Rebecca was determined. If she had meant to leave, she was gone.

She wanted to ask the bartender why he had let her go, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know where they had each come from or where they would be going after they left. He didn’t know them.

She should hail her own cab, a fitting end to a bad day in a week-long series.

She dragged herself back outside, under the awning, where David had slung his friend’s arm over his shoulder and was half-carrying him. She gave them a tight smile because it was the polite thing to do.

“Was she your ride?” David asked. “Do you need another? I kind of remember. Red Bridge, right?”

Her stomach hardened when he said that, and she replied, “I’ll get a cab.” Just like Rebecca had when she had left Riza alone, and Riza thought a stern conversation was no longer the best course of action. Shooting her had been a good idea, though.

“Alright,” he said as he hefted his friend. “But I don’t charge.”

And for some reason, perhaps for the same one that had made her ask Breda to investigate David, she accepted.

The ride was silent, with David’s friend dozing between them with his head tipped back and mouth ajar. The only sound was the squeak of the windscreen wipers as the rain lessened. 

After several minutes of watching lights whiz past, David said, “I’ll drop him first. He’s on the way.”

Riza nodded and leaned her head against the window. She was still angry with Rebecca, but she supposed it was not her friend’s fault alone. The alcohol had impaired Rebecca’s judgement, and she only wanted what was best for Riza. Just because she did not know what the best was didn’t mean her intentions were wrong.

At least the rain would stop in the night. The General would be happy. He hated the rain. 

Riza smiled. Charlie had threatened him with campaign meetings for the entire train ride to Central on Sunday. She would have to invent some urgent business so the General could step away and breathe. 

Something hard fell on her shoulder, and she looked to her side to see David grabbing his friend’s collar and pulling him off of Riza while saying, “Don’t do that.”

The friend grunted and opened his eyes. He met Riza’s gaze and blinked several times and said, “You’re not Ellen.”

“Very observant,” David said with his typical Bauer frown.

His friend’s head lolled to the other side, and he said to David, “She’s not Masha.”

“Look at that,” David said. “It’s your building.”

The brakes screeched, and the car lurched so hard that Riza had to throw her hand forward and support herself on the dashboard.

David’s friend dropped forward and back like a ragdoll, then he said, “Who are you?”

David opened the door and pulled his friend along the bench and into the night rain. “Let’s go, buddy.”

“Wait,” his friend said as he stumbled in the street. “I wanna know—”

Riza never heard what he wanted to know, though she could guess, because David slammed the automobile door closed. She sighed and closed her eyes. She needed to stop accepting rides from strangers.

When he came back, she would offer to pay him. Then she would owe him for two rides home and nothing else. She would find some way to balance that and then, if she were lucky, she might never have to see him again.

The door opened, the engine turned over, and the automobile moved forward. 

Riza opened her eyes and waited for him to speak first—he took pleasure in the sound of his own voice, after all—but he did not speak. So she said, “Can I pay you back for tonight?”

David shook his head. “No. I volunteered for paying and driving. I knew what I was getting into.”

She inhaled and told herself to relax, to not let his veiled comment about the last time they had been in an automobile together annoy her. “Please, let me. How much was it?”

David shrugged. “It wasn’t much. Jerry put it on my regular tab.”

She looked out the window again. She had lived in East City for seventeen years, with only two brief interruptions during that time, and she did not have a regular tab anywhere. She doubted the workers at her favourite places knew her name. 

Not like the General. He had tabs at every bar in East City, a wide circle of acquaintances, a normal box at the opera. She lived preparing for a transience that never occurred. She had told Rebecca she was happy. Was she?

She had also inherited the messiness of small, outstanding debts from her father. He had tabs and small loans owed all over the district, accrued before he had locked himself in his room and had forgotten that everything except for alchemy and promising pupils. He had remembered her in the end, though.

She remembered what David had called him. “Angry and condescending,” words she felt guilty for thinking. It wasn’t her father’s fault, and he had cared about her in his way. Other than that, though, David had been right. He had guessed, or it had seemed like guessing to her, and he had been right.

“How did you know all of that?” she asked. 

“Know all of what?”

She regretted asking, and she did not want to specify. It would invite conversation that would make her upset. However, she could not think of anything else, and she was still feeling the two-and-a-half beers, so she said, “About my father.”

“Oh.” He shrugged and said as if it were obvious. “I was in school for a very long time. I’ve read whole textbooks about you and your father.”

Her chest tightened, and she scoffed. She should have known better than to bring it up in the first place. She turned her shoulders away, determined to be silent for the remainder of the trip.

“That came out wrong,” he said. “What I meant was you’re not the first person to have a…” He paused and then continued, measuring his words, “strained parental relationship.”

Is that what he thought she had? Her father had trusted her.

“You could consider talking to someone. About that.” He drove for a moment before adding, “Not me. I don’t think either of us wants that. But I have a lot of colleagues I could—”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. A lump hardened in her throat, and she swallowed.

“I know I’m a little out of practice,” he began, “because I don’t do this, but I think—”

“It’s not really your place,” she snapped as she felt a stinging behind her eyes. It was always the same with him, she realized. He put himself where he did not belong, spoke on topics about which he knew nothing. He was insufferable and insulting.

“Alright,” he said.

If they ever met after that night, she would not even acknowledge him.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

That apology reminded her that he was just a person. Perhaps he only meant to help, as Rebecca had. The anger dissipated and left a hollow feeling in her chest. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“One,” he said, “you should have. And two…” He chortled. “You know you don’t have to apologize for yelling at assholes, right?”

She turned her head to look at him then, with his hands gripping the wheel and his frown in place. “You think you’re an asshole?”

He furrowed his brow and said, “Have you ever—” Then he pressed his lips together, took a deep breath, and said, “I think I was one the other night. I think you think I am, and I think there’s very little I can do to change your mind.”

She turned away again. He was right for the first time, and she was glad of it.

For the rest of the ride, they only spoke when they crossed the old, red stone bridge, and he asked for more specific directions. Then he dropped her off in front of her building, wished her a good night, and left her on the stoop.

She let Hayate onto the patio and sat with him in her pyjamas. When he pressed his head against her thigh, she pulled him into her lap and squeezed him tight. He did not shake with excitement as usual, but his tail wagged, and he covered her chin with lethargic kisses when she rubbed his ears. Then, when she ran her hand over his belly, she felt a small lump she had not noticed before.

Her chested tightened, and instead of walking him back inside, she carried him into the bedroom and pulled him under the bed covers with her. His tail thumped the mattress while she continued to rub his head, ears, and side, keeping him comfortable and happy.

Her experiences at the bar that night no longer mattered, not when there was so little time left.

She smiled and continued to pet him while over and over again, she whispered that he was a good boy, a very good boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Hanukkah, everyone!


	8. Chapter 8

Riza’s life did not vary. She woke at the same time every day to an alarm in her ear and the weight of Black Hayate on her feet. She fed Black Hayate, ate a quick breakfast of toast and coffee, and took him for a walk.

The walks had been getting slower and shorter as of late, as his sickness worsened and exhaustion hit him more quickly. Still, he loved his walks, and he would wake her himself if she chose to ignore her alarm.

So when she woke that morning after hitting her clock and dozing for a few minutes, when she felt the unmoving weight on her feet, she already knew. She slid her legs from under him and reached down to the foot of the bed to scratch one of his ears. He did not stir.

A stone fell in the pool of her chest and her throat constricted. “You poor thing,” she murmured.

He was cool to the touch, and his joints were stiffening. She waited for several minutes with her hand on his side, hoping that his chest would rise and fall. It didn’t. 

She scooted back against her headboard and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes to stave the stinging there. If she had done a better job of taking care of him, if she had taken more time off, he might not have become sick at all. He might still be alive if she had loved him better.

He was not alive, though, and she sat on her bed, alone and wondering what to do next.

The veterinarian had told her to call in the event of any radical change. She took a deep breath that did not fill her lungs, stood on shaky legs, and left Black Hayate to trudge to her kitchen. She dialled the telephone number written in her address book and waited.

The telephone rang sixteen times before she realized it was far too early for the office to be open, and she hung up.

What was a person supposed to do when their dog died and the veterinarian did not answer the telephone? Where was she supposed to go? Was she supposed to go to work and leave him on her bed? 

Nausea swelled in her stomach and she gripped the edge of the aluminium counter. She was going to be late for work as she tried to figure out what to do and waiting for the veterinarian’s office to open. She needed to call Headquarters. She needed to speak with the General.

It was too early, though. The General would not be in for several more hours, and he might not even be awake yet. She still needed to call.

She swallowed her guilt and dialled his telephone number. While she waited for him, she walked to the table and sat sideways in a chair. She thumbed the taut telephone cord and thought that she could manage her next steps if she could just—

“Hello?” the General said in a low voice, broken and raspy with sleep.

Her shoulders relaxed. “Sir,” she said. “I’m—”

“Hawkeye,” he said, a yawn smothering the last part of her name.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Sir,” she said, even as she smiled, just a little. 

“I’m not—” He groaned and Riza heard sheets shifting before his voice came through clearer than before. “I’m not asleep. What’s going on?”

She swallowed. “I’m going to be late today, Sir. I don’t know when exactly I’ll…” Her breath rattled in her chest and she gripped the collar of her pyjama shirt. “I’m sorry.”

“Did Rebecca wear you down?”

How long would it take? Even after the veterinarian opened, how long would she be out of the office? How many decisions would she need to make? She would have to choose cremation or burial. Where did one bury pets in East City? Surely not in a normal cemetery.

She should have planned for it, but she had thought she had so much more time—

“Hawkeye?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. She should have anticipated telling him. She should have known he would ask. “Black Hayate died sometime in the night. I need to, um…” She inhaled and blew her breath out through pursed lips. “I have to figure that out. I…” She swallowed, shook her head, and said again, “I’m sorry.”

She waited for his response, but none came. She imagined he was rubbing the bridge of his nose, reasoning through what to say. It was a ridiculous request, she knew. She was guaranteed bereavement leave, but that only covered the death of a family member. No one received time off for the death of a pet. She’d be lucky, so very lucky, if he allowed her the few hours she needed to contact the veterinarian and make arrangements. She would be late, and there would be a record that she had been late. That would be better, though, than a record showing he had allowed her unwarranted time off.

Then he said, “Take the whole day.”

Her chest warmed even as she closed her eyes because he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. It could be construed as favouritism, and they had agreed. They needed to live within the implication of the law. “Sir, I don’t—”

“I’ll see you Sunday at the train station,” he said, then the line clicked and he was gone.

She pulled the receiver from her face and looked at it. She could still go into work, of course. If she did, there would be no filing a day off, no questions from Human Resources about why the General had allowed it on such short notice.

Before that, though, she needed to figure out what to do. Perhaps she did not need to wait for the veterinarian at all. Perhaps she could manage things herself and be at work sooner. 

She did not, however, know where or how to begin, and her head spun while she tried to think of what one did with a dead pet.

Riza breathed in and out, in and out. She tightened her grip on the receiver, still in her hand. “One thing at a time.” She would start by hanging up the telephone.

Then she went back into the bedroom where Black Hayate still lay and put her hand on his head. “I’m sorry I left.”

He was on a wool blanket, one she had bought years ago. It was his favourite. He would drag it around the flat—into the kitchen, into the living room when she was reading, onto the bed in the evening—and he would sleep on it every night.

Or he used to. She took a deep breath and pulled the edges of the blanket over his body, swaddling him in dark blue yarn. Before covering his face, she stroked his grey muzzle. Any second, he would wake up and lick her hand, and everything would be fine. 

When he did not wake, her throat closed and she whispered, “You’re a good boy.” Then she covered his face and sat on the bed, fighting back tears and struggling to breathe.

In time, the rush of emotion drained from her and left her empty. She looked around her bedroom. What next?

Riza stood and decided that she could not accomplish anything without first getting dressed. She grabbed the first blouse and skirt she saw in her wardrobe, and as she rolled on her nylons, she realized for the first time that day that the rain had stopped. She had not noticed how much cooler her apartment was, how the fog outside clung to the windows.

At least she would not have to endure the rain again.

A knock sounded at her door, and she ignored it and instead slipped on and buckled her brown pumps.

Her visitor knocked a second time, but she decided to pretend she was not home. She needed to take care of Black Hayate and go into work. Nothing would deter her.

The knocking came again, a series of sharp, incessant raps that continued until she gave up and marched to her door.

There was no peephole, but she could hear two voices in the hall.

“Stop that,” one said, and the knocking stopped.

“Maybe she’s not home,” said the second voice.

“Where would she have gone, dumbass?”

She knew those voices. Relief surged within her as she threw open the door and saw Havoc, one hand raised as if to knock again, and Breda.

“Hey,” Breda said first. “The Chief sent us.”

Of course, he had. She stood and stared at them, both in dress uniform, while her chest swelled. They truly were the best of people.

Breda stepped into her home and asked, “Where is he?”

She pointed over her shoulder toward her bedroom and said, “In a blue blanket.”

He nodded and walked past her, leaving her and Havoc in the entryway of her flat.

“Are you alright?” Havoc asked.

She smiled at him. “I’m not sure.” When he shifted on his crutches, she said, “I’m sorry. Come in and sit down.”

Havoc shook his head. “We’re only here to pick you up.”

Before she could ask where they were taking her, Breda returned with the little blue bundle in his arms. It struck her that Breda had always been afraid of dogs, even Black Hayate, but he was not then.

“Do you want to carry him?” Breda murmured.

The soreness returned to her throat and chest, and the heat returned to her eyes, and she nodded.

He passed Black Hayate to her, and she hugged his familiar weight close. Part of her still expected him to move, to poke his head out of the blanket and lick her face.

“Come on,” Havoc said. “The cab’s running outside.”

She followed them out of the building and climbed into the back of a black automobile with Breda. Havoc adjusted himself and his crutches in the front seat, and the driver began to drive.

Riza watched the streets, shrouded in a thick grey blanket, pass by, and thought that everything that had happened that week, everything she had thought awful, was nothing. The night before did not matter.

Except one thing did matter, and she looked at Breda next to her and said, “I learned something about Elise Holfer.”

His eyes moved from the bundle in her arms to her face and said, “We don’t have to do this now.”

She nodded. “We do.” Her mind was not as focused as she would have liked. She might forget to bring it up later. So she told him what she had learned from Rebecca, about Elise Holfer and the arrest of a protester in early 1908, about how Elise Holfer might have had to make a statement or appear in a courtroom since she was the military personnel involved.

Breda pulled a brown notebook from his breast pocket and wrote while she spoke. When she had finished, he nodded, muttered a thanks, and looked over his notes.

After several minutes of silence, she leaned forward and asked Havoc, “Where are we going?”

He looked over his shoulder and said, “The cemetery.”

The cemetery, as if there weren’t hundreds in the Eastern—No. “The military one?” The General couldn’t do that. The grounds were reserved for active-duty members and veterans with honourable records, not for dogs.

“I know,” Havoc said, anticipating her protestations. “I brought it up when he called me. But he said,” he held up one finger, “and I quote, ‘I run this region. I can do what I want.’”

He couldn’t do what he wanted, though. There was a Judiciary Corps and the General Council and the Führer himself, all things built into the military structure to keep officers from abusing their power. 

The Führer loved the General, though, and he was on the General Council, and the Judiciary Corps had more important abuses to worry about, so perhaps this would go overlooked. The General would have predicted that.

Through the windscreen, the cemetery came into view. A field covered in rows and rows of light grey sentinels standing guard over generations of fallen comrades. 

The cab driver slowed to a stop in front of the gates, and Havoc dug into his pocket for his wallet. Someone outside opened the door, grabbed Riza’s elbow, and pulled her out of the automobile and into an embrace.

Rebecca’s perfume surrounded her, and Riza asked, “Did he wake up the whole city for this?”

“Maybe,” Rebecca said in her ear. “You know how he likes to make a fuss.”

Riza knew too well that the General never did anything simply when excess was an option.

She brought one arm from under the bundle of blankets and hugged Rebecca, who squeezed tighter. Riza closed her eyes and buried her face in Rebecca’s shoulder and let herself be held, if only for a moment.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Rebecca whispered.

“It’s fine,” Riza said. “It doesn’t matter.” It could have been worse, and there were more important things that morning.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Riza sighed. “How?”

Rebecca hummed and rubbed Riza’s back. “If it makes you feel better, I woke up with a killer headache.”

“It does.”

Rebecca pulled back and smiled, then she pursed her lips. “You’re a disaster.”

Riza smiled. Of course, that would be the utmost of Rebecca’s concerns. Looking better was the key to feeling better according to her best friend.

Rebecca dug into her bag and pulled out a comb. “At least I can do something about your hair.” She was not gentle, and the comb pulled hard at Riza’s scalp.

“It’s not an event, Rebecca,” Riza said while she winced at a harsh tug.

Rebecca clicked her tongue. “It’s not a livestock auction, either.”

Riza couldn’t imagine she looked that bad, maybe weary and dishevelled, but she endured until Rebecca stepped back and nodded.

“Thank you,” Riza said, though the words were inadequate. Rebecca had known what she needed—to be taken care of for just a few minutes, to have just a touch of normalcy to remind her that she would be alright. She hugged Black Hayate close and fought back a new wave of tears.

Rebecca leaned in and kissed Riza’s cheek before putting one hand on her back and leading her through the cemetery’s main gates and down a stone path.

Headstones marched on all sides into the autumn fog, parting for her and her little dog.

The vastness overwhelmed her and she stopped walking. She had not stood in a military cemetery since the funeral of Maes Hughes, and it struck her that everyone there had died hoping to fulfil their own dreams for their country, hoping to end wars. Yet war had come again and again and again and again. They had all bought a lie and had been sacrificed in the monstrous machinations of the old regime.

Rebecca tugged at her elbow. “Come on.”

Three figures crouched ahead of them in the fog, and as they drew nearer, Riza could hear their voices.

“Is this even allowed?” a small voice, Fuery’s voice, said.

“I’m the one who signs off on burials in this cemetery,” the General replied. “It’ll be fine.”

“There have been twenty-seven impromptu civilian burials in this cemetery alone,” Falman offered. “Though all of them were human burials—”

“Thank you,” the General said.

The men looked up when Rebecca and Riza approached.

The General, dressed in his formal uniform, knelt before a perfect, rectangular hole in the ground. At the head of the hole stood a light grey stone with “Black Hayate, 1912-1923” carved into it. He rose to his feet, and she saw behind him a child’s casket and a length of rope.

She was about to ask how he had procured everything on such short notice before any shops were open, and how he had brought a gravestone with an inscription, but then she noticed at the base of the stone several telltale lines of a hastily done transmutation.

Of course. Everything was easier when one was an accomplished alchemist.

He looked down at all his preparations and then at her, asking if everything was alright, if he had overstepped.

She smiled and nodded once. It was more than alright.

Rebecca patted her shoulder, and Riza remembered that she wasn’t supposed to just look at the casket. She tightened her hold on the bundle of blankets in her arms.

“Take your time,” Rebecca said.

Riza shook her head to clear it. There was no time to take. They were all doing something so kind for her, and she was making them wait. It was time to let go.

She stepped forward, knelt, and laid him, still swaddled in his blanket, on the bed of white satin in the dark wood box. She tried to stand, but she found she had no strength to pull her hands from the cloth.

The General lowered himself beside her and whispered, “If you’re not ready—”

“I’m ready,” she said. Still, her hands did not move.

“Riza—”

“I am.” One deep breath, then another, and then she yanked her hands to her chest.

The General rose and offered her his hand, which she took. She kept her head bowed as he helped her to her feet, brushed his thumb over her knuckles once, and dropped her hand.

Rebecca pulled her into an embrace, and Riza closed her eyes. She heard Breda’s and Havoc’s voices as they approach, and someone closed the casket with a dull thud.

She pulled back from Rebecca and saw that the General, who never performed labour if he could help it, along with Breda and Falman and Fuery, was lowering the casket into the grave with ropes. She looked back at Rebecca, who smiled and rubbed her arms.

She stepped away, faced the open grave, and nodded. It was time.

The General straightened and cleared his throat while Falman pulled the ropes and wound them into coils. Then the General began, “We’re here to honour Black Hayate and his eleven years of life and military service.”

Riza bit her lip and swallowed down the closing in her throat and blinked back the stinging in her eyes.

“Second Lieutenant Hayate was an exemplary soldier, brave and loyal,” he continued. “But more than that, he was an exemplary dog.”

She could feel him watching her when he whispered, “Do you want to say anything?”

Every word she knew stuck in her throat. She shook her head.

“I do,” said Fuery.

Riza looked across the grave at him, and he met her eyes.

“Is that alright?” he asked.

She nodded. Of course, it was.

Fuery took a deep breath and said, “I found him…I guess eleven years ago, almost to the day. It was during the last thunderstorm that summer. He was so alone, and so small, and just wet and scared.” He clasped his hands tightly together. “And I got that because I was always small for my age, and I was always alone in school, and I’ve never been brave, exactly, so…I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I took him.” 

Riza smiled in spite of herself. She remembered that day, she remembered Fuery’s brining a soaking puppy into the office under his coat, wandering around and asking if anyone could take him. She had been torn between exasperation that he would pick up a stray without further planning and her own pity for the animal.

“He was a good dog,” Fuery continued. “But he wasn’t just brave or good. He was smart.”

Riza smiled and looked down at her hands clasped in front of her. He was a very smart boy.

“I’d talk to him during stakeouts, and I always got the feeling he understood what I was saying. He could never talk back, but he was a good listener.”

Riza understood the feeling.

“It just felt like he was one of us, sometimes.” Fuery looked around at the group. “I know we’re all thinking it, but I wish he were still here. I miss him already.” Then he stepped forward, took a handful of the soil piled next to the grave, and dropped it on the casket.

One by one, the others did the same, scattering dirt until it was her turn. She forced one foot in front of the other and bent down. She grabbed a handful of the soil, took a deep breath, and dropped it. The earth hit the wood with a deafening thud.

Riza realized she had no handkerchief to wipe her hand on, so she brushed her palm on the hem of her skirt. She heard Fuery sniffling, and she turned to him. Some force pulled the two of them, the two who had loved him most, into each other, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“He had a good life because of you,” she whispered.

He squeezed her. “He was your dog.”

She would not have had him, though, if Fuery had not found him.

After a moment, Fuery pulled back and dug into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he passed to her.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she wiped her hands and regretted how woefully unprepared she was for everything that day. She heard a small crackling and turned toward the grave again.

The General had managed to cover it—alchemy, again—without her noticing, and part of her felt it was over quicker than she would have liked. She needed to be there for just a minute or two longer.

“Why don’t we head back to the gate?” Rebecca said. She leaned in and whispered to Riza, “We’ll give you a moment.”

The men mumbled their assent, and Riza looked from them to the General, imploring him to stay. There was so much she needed to say to him, and she did not know when else she would have the chance to say it that day. And she was not yet ready to be alone.

He nodded, and she turned to look at the freshly covered grave. Behind her, the General told the group he’d catch up to them, and then he moved to her side.

When the others were far enough, she said, “Thank you, Sir. For everything.” It was kind of him, so very kind, to arrange everything for her little dog. She knew the excuses he would make. Black Hayate had been brave. Black Hayate had functioned as part of their unit. Black Hayate had belonged to all of them. Still, she needed to remind him that he could face an inquiry from the Judiciary Corps for his conduct. “But, Sir—”

“He was an officer,” the General said. “He deserves the burial of an officer.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed the tightening in her throat. She remembered the day the General had, on a whim, declared Black Hayate a second lieutenant. His alibi was apparent to her: he had not done it for her sake, but for the sake of the canine officer. There were still problems in his reasoning. “The rank was never officially recognized.”

“It should have been,” he said.

She sighed. There were other things worth fighting him over.

She gazed over the field of stones, so orderly in their rows and rows and rows, and she wondered how many there were. She wondered when she would join them.

“Maybe we’ll retire to the country,” the General said. “Be buried under a tree on some hillside.”

She looked at him. He wore that same small, secret smile that had captured her childhood daydreams, and she looked away again.

“A quiet life somewhere in the East,” he continued. “You’d like that, I think.”

She would. There were things she missed, like the quiet community of a small town. One was never surrounded by strangers in the country, one was never alone or isolated unless they wanted to be.

And it seemed appropriate that they would end in the country, for there had they begun, in the few usable rooms of a once-grand estate. They had never been close; no charming city boy in his teen years wanted to befriend a shy girl of eleven, not when there were pretty girls and gregarious boys in the village school who would better suit. Still, she had watched him, and she had learned from him. How to be bold and assertive, how to be decisive, how to laugh. And though they were hardly friends, he was never unkind to her.

Then again, in the country, as they had stood over her father’s grave—he had arranged everything then as well, she remembered. She had been his teacher that time, but she still learned from him. She had learned about dreams, as he meekly told her his for the first time. And she had learned, most of all, how to fall in love.

She had learned that again and again, even when he had left—though he had just learned she had no other family; and even when she saw him again in Ishval—though she was sure he had forgotten her. 

Such thoughts were dangerous. They had agreed they were dangerous. How had he forgotten so soon? She said, “You’d get bored in the country.”

She felt his eyes on her then, but she could not—she would not look at him.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” he said, his voice low and warm and full of promises neither of them could keep. “Things would be different between us.”

They would be different, no longer children, no longer separated by inexperience on an age gap made more expansive by youth. It was a beautiful, dangerous dream.

He had always had such beautiful dreams.

“As for getting bored, I think Fullmetal has it figured out. Quiet, simple life in the countryside, frequent visits to the city when things are too slow.”

This was his plan, then. He always had a plan. He likely had a whole plan for dealing with the Judiciary Corps, who would surely consider a military funeral for a dog frivolous and a misuse of his authority.

None of the others in attendance would testify against him. He counted on their loyalty.

Riza looked over her shoulder and saw Rebecca still standing and waiting on them. She was far enough that she could not eavesdrop, but Riza remembered that, despite their being amongst trusted friends, they were very much in public. Any caretaker or gardener might pass and overhear, and repercussions for their conversation would be worse than those for Black Hayate’s funeral. “Sir—”

“We’ll have a good life,” he whispered.

Why did he persist, even when he must have considered the risks? Even when those risks had finally, after so many years, been discussed? She did not follow his logic, and that scared her.

“After all of this is over,” he finished.

She did look at him then, because everything was far from over. If the next year did not play out in their favour, there was no knowing when everything would be over. It was painful to consider life beyond the immediate.

“I know,” he said, and he turned his head away, but she could see the understanding and resignation in the set of his shoulders, in the tightness in his jaw.

Then he turned back to her, practised smile in place, and held out an arm for her to take. “Shall we head to the office?”

She tightened her fists at her side as she looked at his arm. It was an innocuous gesture—gentlemanly, typical, and even expected in their positions, but it would be foolish to touch him. She could not accept any more physical contact or comfort from him that day, for she would be left wanting more, and she had to train herself to stop wanting.

When she would not meet his eyes, he cleared his throat and let his arm fall, then started toward the gate.

She followed and said, “I’ll get in uniform when we arrive.” She kept a spare jacket and pair of trousers in a drawer, and she could borrow a pair of boots from—

“You will not,” he said. “We’re not working. We’re having a wake.”

She sighed. That was an unequivocal misuse of authority, and of military facilities. “Sir—”

“I’ve shut down the office for the morning.”

“Sir!” She stopped walking. It was too much. She was grateful to him, for she knew in spite of his protestations why he had planned everything, but while everything else might have gone overlooked, shutting down his office for non-essential personnel…It was unheard of.

“The Judiciary Corps?” he said, turning to face her. He shrugged. “We were burying an officer. Or,” he held up a finger before she could remind him, again, that the rank had never been official, “if that’s not satisfactory, then we were burying someone who saved your life on several occasions. Exemplary bravery more than qualifies him for civilian honours.”

Even if that were true, she had never heard of anyone’s pet receiving civilian honours, even if that pet had attacked a homunculus fifty times its size. Even if that pet had been brave and good. Her eyes stung. “There will still be an inquiry.”

He turned and started walking again. “I’m not concerned.”

She had no doubt he had weighed every argument. He never moved without considering optics. “Charlie will be.” She could imagine the General’s campaign manager pulling his hair when he learned about an inquiry, bemoaning the press coverage and asking the General if he could go one week without his face on the front page of a tabloid.

“Let me handle Charlie,” he said.

It was too much. “Sir,” she said. “You shouldn’t put yourself in a position of having to!”

“He couldn’t even be upset,” the General insisted. “I was burying the brave and loyal dog of one of my dearest subordinates. That’s hardly scandalous. In fact, it’s heartwarming.” He nodded. “They make pictures about things like that.”

Of course, he had considered that too. He was right. Filmmakers loved stories about dogs who proved incredible loyalty over the course of their lives, and Black Hayate had been loyal to military personnel. If some director in West City heard the story, Black Hayate might become the subject of the next war picture.

The General had considered the optics.

Something dark and sticky, like a slime, rose in the pit of her stomach and climbed inside of her as she considered that perhaps he had considered the optics before he had considered her. That perhaps press coverage of his heroics in defying stodgy regulations to carry out the burial had most informed his decisions that day.

She shook her head to clear the thought. She had never been blind to his flaws, and she knew he was selfish, but at least he was above using his subordinates’ personal tragedies for his own publicity. He was above using her.

By the time they reached Rebecca, Riza had almost dismissed the idea entirely.

Outside the gates, the General doled out orders: who should travel with whom, who should procure alcohol—though Riza protested that point on the grounds that the General would need to work in the afternoon.

He overruled her, and as he opened the passenger door of his automobile for her, he said, “Today is not a day to worry about me, Major.”

Then, after Falman and Fuery had piled into the back seat, the General added under the hum of the engine’s turning over, “Today, let me worry about both of us.”

She would worry. It was her job to worry about him, but it was also her job to obey, so she nodded.

It was a short trip to Headquarters, and when they arrived, the General gave Falman and Fuery several large bills and instructions to return with bottles of liquor. “I’d prefer fewer bottles of higher quality,” he told Falman. “I trust you.”

When the guard stopped them and asked for identification, the General complained while pulling out his card. Then he gave explicit instructions to allow Rebecca in. “She’s a civilian, but she’ll be arriving with Captains Breda and Havoc. Are they allowed in?”

The guard said anyone with proper clearance was allowed in, then he asked the General to fill out a document describing Rebecca and giving his explicit permission for her entrance. The General grumbled about the ridiculousness of the situation while he signed the bottom, and then he marched down the limestone avenue.

“I’m sorry,” Riza said.

The guard waved a hand. “It’s alright, Ma’am.” He handed her card back to her. “It hasn’t been an easy week for anyone.”

No, it hadn’t. She hurried after the General, but he held up his hand before she could say anything.

“I already know,” he said. “I shouldn’t get mad at him for it.”

“Central will lift it eventually,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Speaking of Central,” he started as they climbed the wide stairs. “You don’t have to come on Sunday.”

It was kind of him to say, if wholly untrue. She did have to. Wherever he went, she would go with him.

“I mean that the trip changed at the last minute,” he continued. “You could take another week, if it would help.”

She shook her head. “No, thank you, Sir.” He had never needed to ask if she would follow him, but he always did, and she always would.

“This trip will be its own sort of hell, I suppose,” he said.

They passed the remainder of the walk to the office in silence, and she thought it was good of him to act and speak with such normalcy. There was a comfort and a reminder in routine and predictability. The world continued, and if she continued with it, she would be fine.

He held open the office door for her and murmured, “Damn, I should have specified brandy.”

Riza had faith that Falman and Fuery could find bottles of something that would meet the General’s standards. As for the brandy… “You have a bottle in your desk,” she reminded him as she entered the empty office.

His eyes narrowed, and he held her gaze. The ticking of the wall clock softened the silence between them. Then he said, “I didn’t realize you knew about that.”

She tilted her head to the side. Of course, she knew. She remembered his receiving a bottle from the Führer after another commendation. She knew he stored it where he kept his research notes, behind the false back of his desk cabinet, safe from standard inspections and nosy subordinates. She had not needed to see him place the bottle or seal the panel with alchemy. His habits were old, familiar companions to her.

The General rolled his shoulders. “Well, let’s go break it open.”

She followed him into his office, and he bent behind his desk and was briefly illuminated by sparks as he unsealed the wood panel. Through the window, she could see the fog lifting from the courtyard. How many times had the General sat under the tree in the northeast corner and tried persuading Black Hayate to eat a treat? 

She bit her lip as a new wave of sadness hit her, but she could not cry. Instead, she leaned her head against the window frame and took slow breaths. She needed to hold herself together until she was home and alone. There would be no puppy to bury her face into, no one waiting for her, no one to give her happy kisses to cheer her up.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright by yourself?” the General asked.

Riza turned her head and looked at him. Worry creased his brow as he watched her in return, and one of his fingers tapped an unsteady rhythm on the cork of a glass bottle. He had asked the question once before, or one like it, at her father’s funeral, just before he had left her.

He was saying goodbye again. He had planned everything that morning as a different sort of farewell, one that had more to do with laws than with loss. Part of her wanted to be angry with him for it, for acting like he was giving her room for grief when he was, in a sense, giving himself his own catharsis. She knew, though, that the reasoning was irrational. She knew he cared for her. 

He trusted her.

So she told him what she had told him years before, “I’ll be fine.” He needed her to be fine, so she would be.

He left the bottle on his desk and joined her at the window. “If you need anything…” He trailed off before he could say something they would both regret. He couldn’t offer her anything without crossing lines.

“I know, Sir,” she said. Riza looked back out the window. He was her commanding officer, and that was all he could be. He could not be her friend, no matter how naturally it came. He certainly could not be her lover. They could take care of one another, but too many rules dictated what sort of care they could offer.

Yet he gave her more than he knew, just by standing with her there at the window.

Voices sounded from the main office, and the General whispered, “They’re here.”

Riza nodded, but she did not want to leave. How could she, when she did not know when they would be able to share their silence again? They were close enough that they could touch. If she breathed deep and closed her eyes, she could smell the chamomile from his shaving cream. Warmth radiated off of him, and she wanted to live in that warmth. To hold and be held.

Those things were not hers to want.

She nodded again, and together they left the private office to join the rest of their comrades.

Havoc held the attention of the other three men with a story about Black Hayate and a pig and a milk truck. Riza knew the story, though Havoc was adding his own embellishments, so she joined Rebecca against the wall.

Rebecca stared into a coffee mug full of dark brown liquor and grimaced. “You want this?” she asked Riza. “The smell alone is making me nauseated.”

Riza took the mug and set it on a nearby desk. “Why did you pour one then?”

Rebecca sighed. “I have a compulsive need to be part of a pack.” Then she put a hand on Riza’s shoulder and said, “Do you want to stay with me for a few days?”

Riza shook her head. It felt nice, letting Rebecca and the General take care of her, but she could not impose on their kindness. “I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, anyway.”

“Should we get a photograph?” Falman called, and the room hushed. “This might be the last time for a while we’re all together in this room.” He shrugged. “Unless General Armstrong lets me come back again.”

Breda cleared his throat. “About that.” He took a deep breath, “I’m moving to Central.”

The statement hit Riza like a slap. The room twisted around her and her stomach dropped. Breda continued, “I’m leaving service to do intelligence work full-time.”

“We both are,” Fuery added. “Two weeks.”

They would be gone before she returned, then, and she doubted they would have time to meet while they were all in Central. She would come home to an empty apartment and a half-empty workplace. The realization clawed at her skin and made he feel almost nauseated.

While Havoc and Falman and Rebecca offered their congratulations, Riza looked to the General for an explanation. In the way his eyes flitted away from hers and toward Breda and Fuery, she saw that he had known. He might have encouraged it. She did not understand his thinking. It bordered on insanity. The last time their entire group had been separated, it had been a threat. And with the election fast approaching, why would he not keep all of them as close to him as possible?

“Human Resources should have cameras,” Havoc offered, and he grabbed a telephone so he could order one sent upstairs.

Havoc, balancing on one crutch that day, approached Riza and Rebecca and said, “Listen, Major—”

“Therapy’s going well,” Rebecca said.

Havoc grinned and nodded at his crutch. “Yeah, it’s great. I want to be completely off of these by the time he wins the election.” Then he looked at Riza and said, “Major, you can’t quit.”

Riza leaned back from him. What a statement. “I wasn’t planning to.”

He held up his free hand. “I know, but you really can’t. You can’t leave me alone in this building. You can’t leave me alone with…” He looked to where the General was laughing, probably at one of his own jokes, and finished, “Him.”

The General turned and grinned at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and she said, “I’m not quitting, Havoc.” She would probably spend the rest of her life working for the General. She knew no other way forward.

The office door opened, and a very harried soldier with a camera stepped into the room.

“Perfect,” the General said. “Get a photograph of all of us.”

Riza obeyed his direction to stand against the white wall, and the team followed suit. She thought that at least in black and white no one would notice that her skirt still had dirt on the hem.

Rebecca declined the General’s invitation to join them, claiming she had never worked for him anyway.

They fell into almost natural positions, Havoc and herself on either side of the General, with Fuery on her other side. Black Hayate’s absence between them brought on another bout of despair, and when she glanced at Fuery, who looked at the floor and then at her, she knew he felt it too.

“Are we smiling?” Breda asked from Havoc’s other side.

Riza turned her head and found that the General was looking at her, asking what she preferred. She nodded.

“Yes, smiles,” he said. He turned to face the soldier and Rebecca, who watched them all with a critical eye. “Pretend you like each other.”

It was such an overused joke, and it had been long before the General had first used it, yet it made her smile with familiarity and comfort. She had loved all of these people for so many years, and she would think about that instead of saying goodbye.

She squared her shoulders and waited for the flash.

“Well,” the General said after it was over and Rebecca was ushering the young soldier from the office, “I’m actually going to get started with my work. My adjutant has the day off today, but I think she’ll kill me if she finds out I did nothing all morning.”

The men chuckled, and Breda knocked Riza with his elbow.

As the General passed her to go into his office, he said, “See you Sunday.” He closed his door before she had time to protest.

Breda left soon after, citing a need to continue his investigation. He told Riza farewell because neither of them knew when they would meet again.

The others slowly returned to their work, and Rebecca asked her, “Are you ready to go?”

Riza nodded.

Rebecca put a hand on her back. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”

Leo’s and Rebecca’s automobile had clean leather seats and always smelled new, even after two years. She wondered as she sat in the passenger’s seat, if their automobile in the South was the same, or if this one only retained its newness due to lack of use. Though they kept a flat in East City, the couple spent most of their time working in the South or travelling outside the country.

Riza wondered what it must be like, owning something whose only purpose was waiting until she decided to use it again. She did not have to wonder, she reminded herself. She still owned a large, decaying estate in the country, and she never visited. It was not the same as owning a vacation home, she supposed.

“I can come in with you,” Rebecca offered as she pulled up in front of the apartment.

Riza looked at the heavy front door to her building and felt her stomach sink. She might open the door slowly, so as to not hit Black Hayate, out of habit, and he would not be there, and it would all be real again. She did not know how she would react, and she could not subject Rebecca to that. So she said, “No, I’ll be alright.”

Rebecca leaned across the bench and hugged her and whispered that she should call if she needed anything, anything at all.

It was quiet when she entered the building. All of the other tenants had left for work.

She rested her hand on her doorknob. She should open the door quickly if only to prove to herself that she could. She turned the knob and pushed hard.

No black and white face waited for her, no eyes stared at her, no quiet bark greeted her. Her flat was empty.

She felt heavy and numb, like every bone in her body weighed her down and kept her from moving.

Perhaps if she made a pot of tea, she would begin feeling better.

She trudged to the kitchen, each step harder than the last, and put the kettle on to boil. She crossed her arms on the counter while she waited. When the kettle whistled, she turned off the burner and went to the cabinet where she kept the bags of tea, but she tripped over something on her way.

She looked down at her feet where she had managed to kick over an aluminium bowl and spill a little dried food across the floor.

He hadn’t finished his dinner.

She stared at the scattered bits. She should clean them up. She should get her broom and sweep and clean them up, and then she should throw out the half-full bag and the bowls and the leash and all of the toys.

She needed to lie down. She needed to leave the bowls and the kettle and just lie down.

So she sidestepped the food on the floor, walked into her bedroom, and fell onto her unmade bed. Then she pulled the covers up over her head and hugged her pillow tight, as if the case stuffed with down feathers could lick her face to assure her that everything would be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember that time the Great FireWall existed and made my life terrible?


	9. Chapter 9

Steam clouds billowed around her as she neared the platform. Riza was used to travelling in first class—the General preferred the privacy of a compartment to the tightly-packed rows of third-class benches. She was used to the General’s buying her ticket, citing that he needed her watching his back, even on trains. She was used to the rush of boarding, the jostling of movement, the press of the crowds.

She was not used to travelling without her dog.

Riza swallowed the lump in her throat. She had promised the General she would be alright.

He stood with his campaign team several meters to her left, next to a merchant selling colourful balloons from a cart. The General gave no indication that he knew she had arrived. Their discussion appeared important, so she would not interrupt.

Neumann, his head towering over the others, noticed her and smiled before averting his attention to the impromptu meeting on the platform.

He had not approached her since Monday. Riza hoped his infatuation had passed. He was a kind man, and he deserved someone free to love him.

She tightened her grip on the handle of her leather case and rolled her shoulders. Her joints were stiff, and the bone-heaviness of morning clung to her. The past two nights had been sleepless. Every sound had roused her, and every waking reminded her that her dog was still gone.

The train screamed as it rolled into East City Station. Doors opened, and passengers poured onto the platform. Departing travellers surged toward the doors. Riza moved to join them, but someone in the crowd of the station called, “Major!”

She stopped and turned to see a head of close-cut red hair weaving through the throng of people. Riza was glad to see Breda before they parted, but why had he come?

“Maj—” Someone bumped him and cut him off. He shoved his way past a family and a young couple, stopped in front of Riza, and opened his mouth to speak. Then, he muttered, “Oh, shit,” and doubled over.

Riza stepped back, but he only gasped for air. “Are you alright?” she asked.

He flashed her a thumbs up and pressed his hands against his thighs. He looked up, chest heaving, and said, “I shouldn’t have stopped working out.”

She smiled. Breda and Havoc had made a pact when Havoc had first begun physical therapy, but while Havoc’s motivation had only grown as he became more independent of everyday assistance, Breda had abandoned his end as he had found himself working behind desks and in the archives.

He straightened, still breathing heavily, and Riza noticed he clutched a brown file in one hand. She knew he had already given the General everything he had on Elise Holfer. Perhaps he had uncovered new information.

Breda held out the file. “I got this for you.”

She must have looked confused as she took the papers from him, because he added, “It’s a file on your guy. Straight from the archives.”

Riza flipped through the pages of “borrowed” documents. One caught her eye. A black and white photograph had been pasted to it, and there was no mistaking the frown, the mess of short, dark curls, or the look of absolute disinterest in the eyes, as if the subject of the photograph were certain he was smarter than everyone else in the room and was already bored by that fact. Breda had put together a file on David Bauer for her.

She shook her head. “You said you wouldn’t have—”

“I know,” Breda said. “But, I thought, with my leaving and everything…” He ran a hand through his hair. “There was also the lead you gave me. The one about Elise Holfer.”

The conductor shouted a boarding call and passengers continued to move onto the train.

Riza nodded slowly. Elise Holfer had thrown a brick at someone protesting the Ishvalan Extermination Campaign, and the action had resulted in a fistfight. “Was it helpful?”

Breda shrugged and then tapped the stack. “You should really take a look at this.” 

When she pulled out the document with David’s picture attached, she noticed the title on the page: “East City Metropolitan Prison System.” It was an arrest warrant. At the bottom, stamped in black ink were the words “SENTENCE COMPLETED.” She looked up at Breda. “He’s been to prison?”

Breda snorted. “Your boy’s been to prison four times.”

She felt a little lightheaded as she tried to rationalize that with what she knew of him. He was a professor. Professors did not spend time in prisons, and they certainly did not serve multiple prison sentences. “Four?”

“The one you’re looking at was during his first year of teaching.”

She looked back down at the document. “They didn’t fire him?”

Breda barked a laugh. “They gave him tenure!”

Riza squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again to be certain she was seeing correctly. She had never gone to university, and her association with universities was limited, but she was sure that most schools did not offer tenure to first-year professors. She read the page, looking for the charge. It was detailed in the middle of the page as “dissemination of anti-government rhetoric and disturbance of the peace.” It was a bureaucratic way of saying what he had really been doing. “Protesting,” she translated.

Breda reached forward and pulled all four warrants from her. He passed them to her one at a time. “Protesting in 1913, 1910…This one is fascinating.” He gave her a third page. “Different charge. ‘Aiding and abetting seven Ishvalan terrorists and defectors’ in 1907.”

Riza read. He had served seven months for that, and he had paid seventy-thousand cenz in fines—one month and ten-thousand for each person he had tried to help. He had lost half a year of freedom and a month’s rent in East City. She did not have to wonder what had happened to the Ishvalan “terrorists” he had helped.

“Last one, from 1908,” Breda said, and he locked eyes with Riza as he handed it to her. “You’re not going to believe this.”

It was David’s photograph, but instead of frowning, he wore a self-satisfied smile. Under the charges, she read, “dissemination of anti-government rhetoric and disturbance of the peace,” followed by another charge that made her dizzy. “Assault on military personnel.”

Her eyes darted to the name of his alleged victim. Elise Holfer. She brought her hand to her mouth. Elise Holfer had declined to make a statement, but someone had filled in David’s. “She deserved it. I’d do it again to anyone who supports this war.”

Riza closed her eyes and breathed. His distaste for the General made more sense in light of the warrants. She collected herself and looked at Breda. “Did you get anything else about her?”

“I’m still going through the court records,” he said, “but, Major, that’s not all.” He pulled a blue paper from the stack of documents in her hands and placed it on top.

A sharp ringing began in her ears. She recognized the document, though she had never signed one, and she did not know if or when she ever would. “He’s married.” The platform suddenly felt hot. He had told her he had a girlfriend. Did he have both? “Are they separated?”

Breda shook his head. “She’s a Drachman national, so they keep tabs on her. They’re registered at the same address.” Then he looked down and said, “I’m sorry, Hawkeye.”

The ringing stopped, and Riza asked, “Why?” Then, because she thought he might have assumed his work was not enough, she said, “This is very helpful.” And it was. Infidelity aside, anyone who opposed the Ishvalan extermination was unlikely to support the Amestrian Freedom Army.

Breda frowned and asked, “Weren’t you—”

The train whistle cut him off. Several people around them waved and called goodbye to their loved ones already on board.

Breda swallowed and said, “They’re playing your song.”

Her heart rammed against her ribs. “They are.” Then she threw her arms around his neck. “Take care of yourself.”

He hugged her back and said, “We’ll overlap by a few days. I’ll call the hotel, and we can get coffee.”

“Promise,” she whispered.

He pulled away and nodded. “I’ll bring Fuery.”

“Tell him goodbye for me.” 

Breda looked behind her and saluted, and she turned her head to see the General standing in the carriage door and watching them. The General smiled tightly and nodded at Breda, then disappeared through the door.

A conductor called out the last call.

Panic ballooned in her chest, and she looked back at Breda.

“Bye,” he said, and he stepped backwards.

She raised her hand in a small wave, then she turned and ran to the car, and she understood why Edward and Alphonse were always late to board.

The train lurched into a slow crawl seconds after she jumped into the car, and attendants moved down the corridors, closing the carriage doors and checking individual compartments. When one approached her, she dug into her skirt pocket and pulled out the green ticket that confirmed her right to be on board the train.

“Your compartment is just there, Ma’am.” He pointed to an open doorway near the end of the carriage. “May I help you with your bag?”

Riza shook her head and said she was fine, and he moved along.

Charlie had reserved two compartments. She assumed the General and the whole of his campaign team would be continuing their meeting from the platform in the compartment next to hers.

She put her hand on the side of the train as she walked toward the compartment, and she wished the fatigue and nonspecific longing that had hounded her for days would dissipate. She could not nap, though, because she would not be able to sleep that night, and then—

Something knocked into her side and sent her falling against the wall. Her eyes flew open. Someone behind her caught her shoulders and kept her from toppling to the floor.

“Whoa!” a familiar voice said. “Are you alright?”

The touch left her as she straightened and berated herself for falling half-asleep while standing. She straightened and turned to thank whoever had caught her and saw Neumann, his back to her, crouching in front of two small children. The meeting must have ended.

“Be safe in the corridors,” he told them. “You could hurt yourselves next time.”

One of the children, a small boy holding a yellow balloon, said, “Sorry, Miss.” Then he grabbed the hand of the girl next to him, and they dashed into the last compartment.

Neumann stood, and the top of his head nearly brushed the roof of the train car. He smiled at her.

They had not spoken since she had turned him down for dinner one week earlier, and Riza’s neck grew hot. “Thank you.” She gave him a tight smile and stepped into her compartment. She was being silly, she knew, but still, she could not shake the heat. Perhaps it was the fact that they would continue to be in close quarters, even after her rejection. Maybe it was because he smiled at her like she would have to reject him outright a second time.

She locked David’s file in her case and lifted it to slide it onto the rack above the cushioned benches, but even in her heels, she struggled to push it into place. The train bumped, and the case slid forward and would have hit her in the face had another arm not reached from behind her and caught it.

Riza did not need to turn to know who had helped her a second time. She stepped to the side while he pushed the case back onto the rack.

Neumann smiled down at her. “It’s the good part of being freakishly tall.”

Riza shook her head. He was tall, at least a full head taller than the General, but she had known and worked with some who were even taller. “Not freakish.”

“Well.” He shrugged and smiled at her, then looked at his hands. “Miss Hawkeye, the dining car isn’t serving, exactly,” he began, choosing each word, “but they’ll have coffee, tea, maybe sandwiches. Pastries…”

As he trailed off, her stomach sank, and she realized she would have to turn him down again, and maybe again and again and again. She had thought kind refusal and general disinterest would dissuade him, but it had not. She should be blunt with him.

“I was going to grab something for breakfast, if you’d like to join me.”

Riza swallowed. “That’s very kind, but—” She stopped herself. No more waiting for him to understand on his own. She would be kind, but firm. “Mr. Neumann—”

“Can I—” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I want to be clear.” He looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath before looking back at her.

She waited with no small amount of dread for him to speak.

Then he said, “I get it. I do.” He waved a hand. “I got it after you turned me down on Monday, and I’m very sorry if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable.”

“You haven’t,” she lied. “Really,” she added, because though she had been uncomfortable earlier, even knowing that he understood made her shoulders relax and her stomach untwist itself.

“I’d still like to be friends,” he said with a smile, and she decided he did have a rather charming smile. “And that’s all. We do a lot of the same work, as it were, just in different contexts, and it seems odd that we shouldn’t be friends.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “So, if you’d like to get breakfast with a friend, there are sandwiches, I think. There are definitely pastries.”

Riza considered. It was a kind offer, and she could imagine baskets full of rolls and sweetbreads laid out on the tables in the dining car, and she was hungry. If he was being honest, and she had every reason to believe he was—no one with guile would be so frank—then he would not try to move beyond the platonic. There was also the matter of the General, and making sure that everything in his work and his campaign ran well, and that could best be accomplished through collaboration. So she nodded. “I would like that. Thank you, Mr. Neumann.” 

“Oh, Ben,” he said. “Please.”

She smiled. “Ben.” Then she held out her hand. “Riza.”

He smiled back and clasped her hand. “Riza.”

She took her hand back. “I want to check in on the General.”

“Oh, of course,” he said as he seemed to realize he stood between her and the doorway. He stepped into the corridor and said, “I’ll just wait here, then.”

She walked past him and knocked on the frosted glass pane on the door to the second compartment. She slid the door open and entered. “Sir?”

The General sat alone, reading a newspaper. His campaign team must have dispersed while she and Neumann had been speaking.

“Sir,” she said again when he did not look up. “Mr. Neumann and I are going to the dining car. Do you need me before I go?” She would bring him something as well. She could predict his every habit, and she knew without having to ask that he had forgotten to eat that morning.

He shook his head and hummed. Then he flipped down the top of the paper and asked, “You and who?”

“Mr. Neumann.”

He studied her for a moment, and then he shook his head and turned his attention back to his paper. “No. I’ll see you when you get back from your date.”

She knew he was stressed, she could see it in the way his thumb twitched where he held the newspaper. The words stung, though, enough that she said, “May I speak freely, Sir?” She would have to say it, as one of her looks would not work if he refused to meet her eyes.

The General huffed and said, “You’re going to, anyway.”

He was right. She would have spoken her mind with or without permission. “Stop being petty.”

The General did look at her then, with a wrinkled nose and a curled lip, and he opened his mouth to reply.

“Sir,” she finished before he could speak. 

It felt good, satisfying in a perverse way, watching him go slack-jawed in disbelief, though she had undoubtedly said worse over the course of the acquaintance. So she turned and left before he could have the last word.

Neumann smiled at her when she emerged, and he led the way to the dining carriage. The first-class carriages all had gangway connections, but he still held out his hand to help her over the gaps between carriages.

When they arrived, she stopped. There were several tables covered in white tablecloths and set with porcelain flatware and crystal glasses. There were no baskets of bread, but waiters brought tiered serving trays piled with finger sandwiches, small pastries, and relishes to diners who were already seated. She had expected something far more casual.

“Are you alright?” Neumann asked, and she nodded, so he held up two fingers, and a waiter brought them to a table. “This is the best part of working on campaigns,” he said as they sat and unfolded their napkins. “Candidates have to travel first class. We need total access to the candidate for prep work, so we have to travel first class, and it all comes out of the budget.”

She smiled. Her ticket had not come out of the budget, but out of the General’s own pocket; however, she could not tell him that. She was grateful for something to talk about, though. She had not sat at such a table in years, and conversation would calm her nerves as she tried to remember finer manners. “How many have you worked on?”

“This is my sixth,” he said. “And my first.”

Riza nodded. That would be the case for everyone, she supposed. “Sixth campaign, but first for Führer.” No one had worked a campaign for Führer before.

“Well, that.” He nodded and folded his hands on the table. “Also, the first five I worked were for the military seats. So, you know, it didn’t really matter how many events I scheduled or who came or what sort of donations or endorsements they got. They were elected regardless. Or whatever you want to call it.”

Riza nodded. For years, a percentage of seats in Parliament were not up for election at all. Instead, the people who filled them were appointed by the military to argue for laws in the military interest, but unopposed national elections poorly hid the appointment. It was the main reason why, despite widespread disapproval of the military state, the stratocracy had perpetuated for so long. No party other than the military’s own had ever held enough seats until the last parliament election, two years before, when the military seats had been abolished, and Richard Kaufman’s party had taken the plurality.

Neumann looked down at his hands. “This is the first one I’ve worked on that really matters. And it’s the only one that matters. If I mess this up, I’m not just letting my candidate down. I’m letting the whole country down.” He looked back up and grinned. “So I’m basically stressed all the time.”

A waiter in old-fashioned livery approached their table and asked, “Ma’am, Sir, how may I be of service today?”

Neumann looked at Riza, then at the waiter, and said, “We heard you have sandwiches.”

The waiter bowed his head low. “Yes, Sir, but if you’ll be good enough to wait, we’ll be starting full service in five minutes.”

Neumann looked at her, waiting for her answer, and she smiled at the waiter and nodded.

When the waiter had taken their drink orders—coffee for him and tea for her—and left them with two menus to peruse, she leaned across the table and asked, “Should we really stay and charge a full meal?” It seemed like an excess in the early days of the campaign. “Won’t Brandt kill us?”

He looked over her head and smiled. “Something tells me he won’t mind too much.”

She turned to look behind her and saw Brandt and Charlie sitting at a table near the back end of the carriage. Brandt pored over a menu while Charlie gathered papers into a case and stood. He nodded at Riza and Neumann as he passed them on his way to the passenger carriages, possibly for another meeting with the General. Brandt, however, stayed and smiled at a waiter who brought him a serving tray of hors d’oeuvres.

Riza heard a slight clatter and turned to see their waiter putting another tray on their table. Each tier was laden with salmon mousse on cucumber slices, dark berries and goat cheese on digestives, soured cream with radish and chives on oatcake, and many meringues and cream puffs. Small bowls overflowed with red wine pickled grapes, olives, celery, and baked nuts.

It had been a long time since she had been served such a spread, and she had never in her life been served one at breakfast.

“I don’t know what half of this is,” Neumann whispered as he stared down at the menu in his hand. He lowered it to the table, took a long breath, and smiled. “We’ve talked about me. How are you?”

She was exhausted. She hadn’t slept well since she had lost Black Hayate, and that had been a cap on an already stressful week. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?” He tilted his head to the side. “You seem sad.”

She was, but she was not going to burden him with that. “It’s been a long week.”

He pulled his napkin from the table and unfolded it and placed it in his lap, and she did the same. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she said. “No, I…” He was a near stranger, and he was by his own admission as stressed as she was. He did not need her problems on top of his own. Then she remembered David Bauer and how he had told her she should talk to someone. It was none of his business of course, but there may have been some merit to his advice, however unwanted it had been. And she did want to talk to someone. Rebecca was busy with her marital problems, and the General was consumed with the campaign and everything that had transpired over the course of the week.

But there was Ben Neumann, asking her outright if she needed a confidant and waiting for her to decline with a smile. She knew that he would listen if she asked him to. “I do,” she said, and then she added, “If you don’t mind.”

He nodded and leaned forward a little. “Not at all, Riza.”

She looked up at the ceiling, at the crystalline light fixtures and copper ceiling tiles, and tried to figure out how to begin. The horrible timing of Alphonse Elric’s exile, the radio hijacking, the personal and very late conversations with the General, two encounters with an insufferable psychologist, and the death of her dog on Friday...Somehow, that last thing seemed the best, and safest, place to start, and wasn’t that the most significant source of pain in her life at the moment? “My dog died on Friday.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He leaned back in his chair and said, “Was he very old?”

She shook her head and swallowed the hardness in her throat. “Eleven.” She supposed it was not so young, but she thought again that he might have lived longer if she had cared for him more. “He was sick.” Her eyes stung, and she gripped the napkin in her lap to keep tears from falling. She would talk, but she could not imagine what he would do if she began crying in the middle of the dining carriage.

She remembered how broken Fuery had been at the funeral—Oh. Oh, Fuery and Breda were leaving too. “And two of my friends are moving to Central.”

She looked up at him, searching for a sign of disinterest, but he watched her with a small, sad smile. He was kind to listen, and she thought he would keep listening. So she continued to speak, working backwards through the days, and she felt that perhaps being friends with Ben Neumann would be a good thing.

* * *

Mustang folded his arms and stared hard at the rack where he had stored his case. Hawkeye’s words thrummed in his veins, even as Charlie prattled about stupid things like image and publicity.

Petty. It was a ridiculous word to ascribe to him. He knew he was not entirely perfect, as she reminded him daily, but petty? He had never been petty in his life. His comment from earlier had not stemmed from pettiness but from…He was not sure he knew the word for it, but he was sure it wasn’t pettiness.

He didn’t like that his adjutant and his scheduler were getting breakfast together because he didn’t want his office and his campaign mixing. It was illegal for his employees or subordinates to work on the campaign, and their association would raise too many questions. That was all.

“I’m not petty,” he muttered.

Charlie stopped speaking and looked at him. “What?”

“I’m not petty,” Mustang repeated louder.

Charlie leaned back in the seat across from Mustang and said, “I never said you were.”

Mustang nodded. “Because I’m not.”

Charlie looked at the sliding compartment door, then at Mustang. He took a deep breath. “We have a lot to cover.” He picked up a new piece of paper.

Neumann had booked newspaper and radio interviews, potential donor luncheons and coffees, and so many other events around Mustang’s official duties that the schedule made his head swim. If Neumann were in the compartment with them, and not eating with Hawkeye, he might be able to explain why so many events were necessary.

“Shouldn’t Neumann be here?” Mustang asked. “We should find him.”

Charlie held out a hand. “His job is preparing your schedule.” He pointed to his chest. “Mine is preparing you.”

Mustang huffed and slammed his back into the cushioned wall. As far as he was concerned, Neumann’s job was focusing on him, not his adjutant.

Charlie set the page on the bench next to him. “I know I asked weeks ago, but is there something you need to tell me?”

Mustang’s stomach tightened. There was nothing he could tell, even if he wanted to. 

Charlie’s face hardened. “It will come out,” he said. “Everything does in the end. But the more you’re honest with me, the more I can control how that happens.”

“There’s nothing,” he said. Nothing had ever happened, except for that one kiss fourteen years earlier, and they had both buried that. Nothing would come out. He would make sure of it, because if they were investigated, everything she had entrusted to him would surface as well. Their childhoods, her father’s research, and once rumours started circulating, the truth behind the stories wouldn’t matter.

“Are you sure about that?”

He clenched his jaw. “I’m positive.”

Charlie rubbed at one of his eyes. “Roy, I’m not—”

Mustang reached across the gap between them and snatched the paper from the opposite bench. He read the first line of the brief and said, “This is being filmed?”

Charlie considered him for a moment and then said, “It’s a newer idea. We think it could have a great impact.”

Mustang read over the page. He was familiar with the concept of filmed interviews. He had seen several with film stars playing before their pictures or between double features. The old government had run successful military recruitment short films—seeing them in theatres had ultimately persuaded him to enlist—but they had always been light, inspiring, and never topical. No government leaders had ever discussed themselves or national policy on film, and he figured there was a reason for that. “I thought people went to pictures to escape the news and their daily troubles,” he said. “Do they really want more politics?”

“Do they want more news when they turn on their radios?” Charlie said. “Or walk down the street? Or buy chewing gum?”

Mustang frowned at him. Charlie was still pushing that, then.

Charlie crossed his arms. “Advertising is about dissemination, not courtesy,” he said.

“Touching.” He knew his political persona was a commodity. He had always known as much, and Charlie had emphasized that fact. Still, the filmed advertisements and his face emblazoned on chewing gum wrappers made him feel like more of a brand of toothpaste than a person. He dropped the paper next to him.

Charlie pulled another one from his bottomless briefcase. “Now, we got lucky with one of your radio spots. Eileen Bridges usually does these interviews, but she’s out of town for her honeymoon. So instead you’ll be working with…” He read over the page in his hand. “Maureen Hall.” He held it out, and Mustang took it.

Mustang read down the brief and prompted, “This is good because…”

“Because Eileen Bridges has a reputation.” Then, in a very pointed tone that Mustang did not like at all, he added, “She can smell lies.” When Mustang only glared at him, Charlie clicked his tongue and said, “But it doesn’t matter, because we won’t be meeting her.”

“It shouldn’t make a difference,” Mustang said, handing the paper back. “There’s a pre-approved list of topics.”

“Sure,” Charlie said, “but Central has slightly different journalism laws now. They can ask you anything based on your answers. That’s why you’re talking to me.”

Then he pulled out a stack of cards and ran through topics and questions on policy, on the election process itself, on international knowledge and issues. Mustang was glad he had gone before so many promotion boards. He was used to such questions and knew how to give concise, satisfactory answers.

Charlie tapped the stack on his knee to straighten it and said, “We have one more. It’s the big one.”

Mustang had thought the previous question, “Why do you think you should be the Führer,” was the big one, but from the way Charlie was looking at him, he understood. That big one. “I thought that we settled this.”

“A lot of people feel it’s tied to managing and representing the nation.”

He scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I agree,” Charlie said. “At the same time, we need to talk about how to approach it, because everyone wants to know, and you’re going to be asked.”

Mustang leaned forward as if moving closer and speaking clearly could communicate to the world what should have been obvious. “Marriage is irrelevant to my ability to govern.” When Charlie only looked at him with an impassive expression, Mustang said, “Marriage is not my priority right now. Amestris is.” He assumed those were decent answers, so he pointed to Charlie and said, “I thought this wasn’t your idea.”

Charlie held his hands up. “It wasn’t. I don’t need you to get married. I need us to finalize an answer we can give when people ask why you’re not.”

Mustang leaned back and shrugged. “I have no interest in getting married right now.” It was not true: he had a great and immediate interest in marrying one person. He thought it strange that he had once considered telling that gossip reporter that he was just a hopeless romantic spending his time searching for the right woman when the opposite was his reality.

“You have an interest in dating,” Charlie said, breaking Mustang’s train of thought. “You were at the opera on Thursday. Riza told me.”

Mustang clenched his teeth. “Did she?” Traitor. He swore to himself he’d get onto her for that, though he knew he never would. He shrugged. “It was a work meeting.” A work meeting with one of Vanessa’s girls to combat an emerging terror group. It had hardly been an outing for pleasure, even if the information had been sparse and the performance enthralling and Mariya Pavluochenko, the singer who played the lead role Helene, magnificent. He had yet to boast to Hawkeye that he had remained awake for the entire thing, except for those few scenes in the second act. 

Charlie nodded. “I’m sure it was.” He leaned back, crossed his arms, and raised one eyebrow. “Now explain that to me as if I’m five million people you need to convince to vote for you.”

Mustang swallowed. Charlie was right—he usually was—but that was a task. There was little way to explain that he had been using prostitution rings to spy on upper levels of the military and the government for the better part of fifteen years. “Can’t we just not approve the topic?”

Charlie looked out the window at the passing fields and farmhouses before saying, “Alright.” His dark eyes locked onto Mustang’s before he continued, “It’s a glaring omission, and you’ll have to address it at some point, but alright.”

Mustang’s entire body tensed, and he felt those first pangs shoot through his fingers. He clasped his hands tightly together. “What would you have me say?” 

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know. Ideally, you’d be honest with me, and we could work with that to create some sort of narrative.”

Mustang looked up at the ceiling. If Charlie wanted a narrative, he could use the one Mustang had planned to sell to the reporter. He looked back at Charlie and said, “Maybe I’m just looking for the right person.”

Charlie frowned. “Some might wonder what’s wrong with you since you haven’t.”

Mustang snorted. There was nothing wrong with him, nothing that would prevent him from getting married. No, the law did a good enough job of preventing it for him.

“Maybe you already have,” Charlie suggested. Then in a softer voice, he said, “The best lies are close to the truth.”

His heart pounded. He should have been more careful. He always should have been more cautious. That reporter had noticed, and Charlie had noticed. How many more? Perhaps he would be wise to disclose everything to Charlie before the story ran in the papers.

Then again, he had waited almost a week to see the headline about himself. Maybe the reporter had seen less than he had thought.

“We’ll strike the topic,” Charlie said while Mustang said at the same time, “I’ll let you know.”

Mustang met Charlie’s eyes and said, “I’ll let you know about running that narrative. I have to think about it.” It would not affect only him, after all.

Charlie nodded and started gathering papers.

Mustang’s thumb jumped, and a sharp pain burst through his palm, and he knew he needed to leave. He jumped to his feet and threw open the door.

“Hungry?” Charlie asked.

“Not really,” he grumbled.

The door slid shut behind him as he fell against the corridor wall, and he worked at his hand, massaging from the centre of his palm to the tips of his fingers as she would have done. As she used to do. His chest tightened with the overwhelming desire to see her.

The door to their second compartment was closed. He decided he should check inside, just to be sure she was not there. She might still be with Neumann in the dining car.

He slid the door open, just to see, but she was there, and she was quite alone.

Her eyes were closed, and her head leaned against the window at an angle she would regret upon waking. She held a stack of papers in one hand, but most of the pages had fallen and blanketed the floor.

He bent down to pick them up, to stack them next to her on the bench, and he noticed one blue paper that he could not justify her possessing. He grabbed the marriage certificate off the floor and read the longer of the two names. “Mariya Ivanovna Orlova Pavluochenko.” 

He could not fathom what Hawkeye could be doing with the marriage license of an opera singer, and then he read the other name, which raised more questions.

Questions he could ask later, he thought as he looked back at her. He was glad she slept. He had noticed the dark circles under her eyes before they had boarded the train. Getting away from East City would be good for her. She might be able to sleep better away from her flat.

There was a strand of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth, and there was a voice in his head telling him that he did not need to get married but that he did need a narrative, and it was hard, so very hard, not to reach out and touch her.

They were alone, though. She would be annoyed if she woke up with hair in her mouth as well as a pain in her neck, and he could easily fix the first thing. He lifted his thumb to brush the hair away.

She inhaled sharply and sat upright, and he jerked his hand back.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as her eyes opened.

She ran her hand down the side of her face and looked at her palm when the strand of hair stuck to it. She grimaced and wiped her mouth with her thumb. Then she looked up as if seeing him for the first time and opened her mouth to apologize.

“You dropped these,” he said with a casualness that let her know an apology was unnecessary. “You should lie down.”

Hawkeye shook her head and blinked, still bleary-eyed from sleep. “Thank you for waking me.” Her voice creaked, and she swallowed hard while she took the offered papers and put everything on the bench next to her. “Can I do something, Sir?”

He smiled. She could lie down and sleep, or talk to him, or remain just as she was in silence. He did not need anything more. “Just looking for somewhere quiet.”

She nodded and was unsuccessful in stifling a yawn.

He sat across from her and nodded at the papers. “What’s all that?”

She put a hand on the stack and pushed to fan the papers out. “Something from Breda.”

He was still confused. He had not known David Bauer was married to a Drachman opera singer, nor did he know why proof of that marriage was in the compartment with them. “Why are you investigating Mrs. Bauer’s son?” He figured she had looked into the entire Bauer family before he had hired his housekeeper.

She shook her head and covered another yawn. “He’s a political psychologist. I thought he might be useful with everything going on.” She picked up the stack and handed it to him. “I didn’t know how fruitful it would be.”

So she had not wanted to bother him with it. He wondered if she was running any other investigations without his knowledge.

He flipped through the file and stopped on an arrest warrant. Four arrest warrants, actually. He had not known about those either. He read the first one. “Dissemination of anti-government rhetoric and disturbance of the peace,” it said.

It was what Mustang should have been doing, instead of following orders and becoming the “Hero of Ishval.” He cleared his throat and said, “Well, at least he’s a decent person.”

Hawkeye let out a sound that was not quite a laugh.

He looked at her, but she had her lips pressed together as she stared out the window at passing trees and fields. “Is that funny?”

She faced him, and he waited for her to explain why his comment had warranted that reaction, but she only said, “No, Sir.” 

He handed the documents to her, and she tapped them into a neat stack on her legs. He watched her as she organized the file, reordering pages and turning them right-side up.

Her hair just brushed her shoulders, and every so often, she tucked her fringe behind her ear before it fell across her forehead once more. Regulations would require that she tie her hair back soon. She had once worn a brown clip, but it had broken long ago. He might get her a new one when the time came.

He had intended to buy her another gift, but that had been before the dates of the trip had changed. “Your birthday is while we’re in Central.”

She smiled at the papers in her lap. “You threatened me with a vase.”

He leaned against the seat cushion behind him. “I’ve decided against it.” When she looked at him with eyebrows raised, he shrugged and explained, “I imagine you’d leave it in the hotel room and claim it was too inconvenient for travel. And then we’d be back where we started.”

She smiled wider, the first one he had seen in days that reached her eyes, and said, “I would never.”

“You say that,” he said as he raised a finger, “but I know you.”

Still smiling, she shook her head and looked through the window again.

She was dressed simply for travel, but she still looked lovely in a white blouse and grey cardigan. Somehow, even after falling asleep on the train, she was clean and pressed. She had always been good at presenting an unflappable and straight image, at hiding. But he had always been good at seeing through the cracks.

“I thought that instead that you could take some time off.”

She folded her hands. “I have two vacation days left, Sir, and I’d—”

“Yes,” he said, because she had misunderstood him “But you have as many discretionary days as your superior allows.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear again and said, in that tone that told him she was about to say something he wouldn’t like, “Sir—”

“Do you know what I wrote on your performance evaluation?” He had given the performance evaluations for the office to her to take to Human Resources weeks earlier, but she knew better than to read them. Still, she would not have been shocked to read hers. She watched him, waiting, and he said, “The same thing I always write.”

She ducked her head because she was clever and modest enough to act flattered when she was not surprised. “Exemplary,” he had written.

He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the slight pain in his palm. He would not have a second episode that morning. “I don’t think anyone will question why I’m giving you extended leave. I think they’re more likely to ask why I haven’t until now.”

He had once said he could not spare her during the campaign, but things had changed since then. She looked tired—grief was an exhausting companion. She worked hard. She deserved a break.

He knew she would not accept, though, and his hand was aching, and he saw that she was opening her mouth to protest, so he said, “Speaking of your performance evaluation, some colonel in the South just retired, and Lieutenant Colonel Katorosz is being reassigned there to replace him.”

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him because she knew what that meant. An opening in a commissioned rank above hers meant she would be eligible for a promotion, and he would not have brought it up if he weren’t considering calling together a promotion board.

She shifted and crossed her ankles. “Isn’t that favouritism, Sir?”

Ah, that word. The fraternization code seemed to touch every action he took, even when his intentions were honourable. He gave in and started massaging the aching hand. His doctor would tell him that he needed to be easier on himself and that he needed to relax more. He would not have much time for relaxation over the next year.

She tightened her fists in her lap as she watched him work at his palm and his fingers.

“Recognizing competence is not favouritism,” he said. “And we’d be convening a whole panel, so unless the papers want to accuse every general in this country of favouritism…”

Hawkeye nodded.

The reporter affected her as much as she affected him. He had checked the papers every morning that week, looking for some headline that would open an investigation into him. Any inquiry would shed light on acts far more troubling, and with much more dire consequences, than any compromise to the chain of command. Yet there had been nothing. Perhaps the reporter had seen nothing more than a friendly gesture.

“She hasn’t published anything,” he told her. “I might have just been paranoid.”

She nodded again. “It’s likely.” Then she smiled that calm, sweet smile, and said, “But that’s not a bad thing, Sir.”

He supposed she was right. He had always been, by some estimations, paranoid, but she had never shamed him for it. His paranoia had proven useful in the past. Whenever he had compromised the safety of his subordinates or the integrity of an operation, it was due to his not being cautious enough. No matter how he wanted to reach across the gap and touch her, no matter how alone they were, he could not. The compartment door could open on them. Everything could be compromised in an instant. Vigilance was a virtue.

She, however, leaned forward and took his hand. Her fingers were strong, gentle, and sure as they worked the pain out of his fingers until the stiffness had subsided. When she had finished, he brushed his thumb over her knuckles once and pulled his hand back.

She sighed, leaned back in her seat, and turned her head away from him to stare out the window again.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He was glad. He would always rather stay with her, enjoying having nothing to do and nowhere to be and nothing to say. They would have minutes—hours if they were fortunate—before someone disturbed them.

There in that compartment, there was no campaign, no Amestrian Freedom Armies, no reporters. There were only the two of them and the silence they shared.

* * *

The bullpen of the _Eastern Tribune_ was loud. Telephones rang with little interruption, typewriter keys clacked, carts barreled between desks, and conversations buzzed, all of it creating a frenzied symphony that Geneva Menke loved.

She belonged there, in that bullpen, where news changed in an instant and where the things reporters published mattered. She would have her own desk soon if she could just get Mr. Heller to accept one of her articles.

She had a lead, a real lead, something substantial and worthwhile. She knew it. All she needed to do was convince him.

Geneva wove through carts and reporters and interns to the door with “Robert Heller, Editor-in-Chief” emblazoned on the glass, with “_Eastern Tribune_” below it, and “_& Eastern Review_” below that in smaller type. Mr. Heller sat at his desk with the Assistant Regional Editor, Margot, standing over him. They shuffled articles and headlines around on a cork-board, plotting out the format for the next morning’s issue.

Geneva knocked, and Mr. Heller looked up, sighed, and waved her in. “Switch those two,” he was telling Margot as Geneva entered, “and it should be fine to run. Sit,” he said to Geneva, and he pointed at a chrome and suede chair in front of his desk. Then he looked at Margot. “Get this out. I want it sent to print as soon as we have the editorials.”

Margot pulled the cumbersome board off the desk and shuffled out of Mr. Heller’s office.

Mr. Heller pulled off his glasses and rubbed one eye. “Alright, what is it today? Another piece on unions? Rising inflation? Immigrant rights?”

Geneva bit the inside of her cheek as heat rose up the back of her neck. “Actually, it’s about Roy Mustang.”

Mr. Heller put his glasses back on and asked, as if the words exhausted him, “His policies on immigrant rights?”

She had to be careful in her approach. How many stories had she brought him? How many times had he told her to stick to her beat, to keep writing puff pieces until she had worked long enough to move upstairs to the _Tribune_? “It’s about his personal life.”

“Ah.” Mr. Heller slapped a hand on his desk. “See, that sounds like what I hired you to do. Good work.” Then he checked the watch on his wrist.

There was more to her story than that, though. “Mr. Heller—”

“Where the hell is he?” he muttered as he pushed himself to his feet and stalked to his office door. “Where the hell is Michael?” he yelled at the bullpen. “I need those editorials on my desk five minutes ago!"

“Mr. Heller,” Geneva said, twisting in the chair, “I think he’s having an affair.”

Mr. Heller snorted and went back to his desk. “It’s Roy Mustang,” he said, and he dropped into his desk chair and began rifling through stacks of papers. “You’re probably right.”

“Yes, but I think he’s having an affair with his aide.” General Mustang had called her “Major Hawkeye,” and Geneva had not had to ask too many questions to learn about their professional relationship. However, his behaviour had left her with many questions about their private relationship.

“Interesting angle,” Mr. Heller said as the door opened and Michael, who oversaw editorials, ran in and handed a stack of papers off. “Why are you talking to me instead of writing it?”

“Well…” Geneva watched him scan the first editorial and tried to find the words that would emphasize that she had uncovered something important. “It’s not just an affair, then. It’s illegal.”

Without looking up, he said, “Most affairs violate some sort of law or code. That’s why they’re affairs and not relationships. That’s why you write about them.” He dropped the papers on his desk and looked at Michael. “There are only four here. We’re running five.”

Michael nodded. “James is rewriting his final paragraph—”

“God. Why?” Mr. Heller stood up and marched to his door. “Can anyone tell me when this issue is supposed to print?”

“Four tomorrow morning,” someone called.

“Thank God someone showed up to work today,” Mr. Heller said. “We are printing this in eight hours, so I’d appreciate it if everyone could stop acting like we’re not distributing until next Tuesday.” He turned back to the two in his office and sighed.

“It could result in a court-martial,” Geneva said while, at the same time, Michael said, “He thought the final paragraph was too opinionated.”

Mr. Heller stared at Michael. “It’s an editorial.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Mr. Heller reached forward, grabbed the papers off his desk, and slapped them against Michael’s chest. “Remind him of what an editorial is supposed to be, and then come see me again.” As Michael nodded and hurried away, Mr. Heller called after him, “He has three minutes to change it back!”

Geneva cleared her throat. “A court-martial could have implications for the election.”

Mr. Heller folded his arms across his chest. “Geneva, do you know what happens to him if an affair like that even makes it to a military court?”

She nodded. Myrtle had been studying in their apartment for her exams for months. Geneva had helped her. And because Myrtle was studying military law, they had spent a great deal of time pouring over those codes. “Yes.”

“Nothing,” Mr. Heller said as if she had not spoken. “Nothing happens to him. A man like that didn’t get where he is without making a few friends.”

Geneva frowned in indignation. “That doesn’t mean he’s untouchable.” Mr. Heller ignored her, and, feeling her gut hollow, she said, “It’s still news.”

“But it’s not _Tribune_ news.” He folded his arms across his chest and said, “You’re a smart kid, Geneva. You wrote good pieces for the East City University paper.” He gestured to his closed office door. “But so did every person out there, and they put in their dues at the bottom to get to where they are now.” He stepped toward her and patted her shoulder. “Go back down to the _Review_, and write what I pay you to write.” He looked at the small clock on his desk and said, “Actually, it’s eight o’clock. What are you still doing here? Go home.”

She bit the insides of her cheeks and swallowed the hard lump in her throat as she stood and left his office. She grabbed her bag from her desk downstairs and locked her drawers, and then she trudged out of the building and onto one of the trams. There were no places to sit, so she stood and leaned her head against a metal pole, letting it hit her skull with every bump in the road.

It was unfair, wholly unfair, that Mr. Heller would not hear her out because of her lack of experience. She knew she was a good writer, and she knew she had good instincts. She knew she was better than half the _Tribune_ staff who had been writing for more than ten years.

She almost missed her stop, and she pushed off the tram and dragged herself up five flights of stairs and into the flat she shared with Myrtle.

Geneva sagged against the door and kicked off her heels.

One day, Mr. Heller would stop listening to her. She needed to prove what she could do before then, but if he would not even consider giving her a one-time spot in the _Tribune_, what could she do?

There was a run in the foot of her right stocking, and the ball of her foot stuck to the wood floor as she dragged herself to the corduroy sofa and fell face-first onto the cushions.

She should just write the damn thing. Mr. Heller was right, though. The only story she had was an affair, and that was the sort of thing she already wrote for the _Review_. Keep her head down, stick to her beat.

Hadn’t Mustang said the same sort of thing? “That’s your normal beat, is it?” he had asked. She clenched her teeth as her cheeks burned from the mockery all over again.

“Genny?” she heard Myrtle say. “Genny.” Myrtle shook Geneva’s shoulder. “Hey, Genny.”

Geneva grunted and buried her face deeper into one of the cushions.

Myrtle sighed, and her hand left Geneva’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you call? I was getting worried.”

Geneva turned her head to the side and stared at the peeling wallpaper above the fireplace. The flue had been bricked up before the two of them had found the flat, and the fireplace instead served as a storage space for some of Myrtle’s law books. “I didn’t realize what time it was.”

Myrtle hummed and brushed Geneva’s hair from her cheek. “Do you want me to heat up a plate for you?”

Geneva sighed. Of course, Myrtle had already made and eaten dinner. She should have left sooner. She should not have gone upstairs at all. “No.” Then she turned her face back to the sofa cushion.

Myrtle kept her hand on Geneva’s head, smoothing down her hair and occasionally brushing the shell of her ear. “We’re not students anymore, Genny. You can’t live on coffee and breakroom pastries.”

“I can try,” Geneva said. 

Myrtle pulled Geneva’s hair back from her neck, her thumb brushing just below Geneva’s ear. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Geneva sat up, turned around so she leaned against one arm of the sofa, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I went upstairs today.”

Myrtle lowered herself onto the sofa opposite Geneva and smoothed the skirt of her dress. It was a pale pink linen, the same dress she had been wearing the day they met, and it set off her dark skin in a way that always made Geneva smile. Myrtle took a deep breath. “What was the story about?”

Geneva pressed her thumbs together and looked at her toes. She already knew what Myrtle would say. “Roy Mustang.”

“I thought he was blowing you off.”

She nodded. “He was.” Then she shook her head. “He is. I went to see him on Tuesday.”

Myrtle inhaled, just as Geneva knew she would. “Genny—“

“And,” Geneva said, louder, “I think—”

“He probably didn’t want to talk to any reporters on Tuesday,” Myrtle said.

Geneva looked up at the ceiling and worked her jaw from side to side to relieve the stiffness. She had not wanted to talk to him about the radio incident on Monday. She had told him what she wanted to write. For a moment, she thought he had seemed a little interested. Her reasons for going, though, were not the real story. What happened next was. She looked at her girlfriend and said, “Myrtle, I saw something.”

She told her, making sure to include every detail she could remember. How General Mustang had been patronizing but had entertained her until Major Hawkeye had appeared. How his posture had changed, his spine straightening and his shoulders relaxing and his mouth forming a smaller yet more genuine smile than the one he had given Geneva. How his hand had hovered, just for a moment and without touching, over the Major’s lower back before it had fallen and he had turned to look at Geneva one last time. When she was finished, she half-smiled at Myrtle and said, “Well?”

Myrtle shrugged. “Well, what?”

Geneva blinked several times. “That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

Myrtle sighed, reached out, and took Geneva’s hand. “You know I love you, and you know I’ll support you—“

“Don’t,” Geneva said, and she snatched her hand back. Roy Mustang had told her to stick to her beat. Robert Heller had told her to stick to her beat. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if Myrtle did the same. “Don’t do this.”

“You don’t have evidence,” Myrtle said in that impossible, reasonable tone. “You have a hunch. That’s not—”

“Everything starts with a hunch,” Geneva said. She stood and paced in front of the sofa. She knew Myrtle preferred Mustang to the other announced candidates. In university, Myrtle had engaged in many arguments with her father on social issues that had left her exhausted and distressed, and she hoped that Mustang, who had implemented so many changes in the East, might maintain his progressive streak at a national level. Myrtle called him their best hope, and Geneva knew she did not always mean Amestris. Still, she hated that Myrtle would take his side over her own. “He could be abusing his position.”

“Alright,” Myrtle said, and Geneva stopped pacing to look at her. “Let’s pretend your hunch is right. Do you know what happens to him if you write this?”

Geneva rolled her eyes. Mr. Heller had asked her the same thing, and she was able to mouth along as Myrtle said, “Nothing.” Then she raised a finger and touched the tip of her nose because that didn’t make sense. He had looked back at her. He had looked scared, as if her seeing that gesture was worse than the accusations on the radio. It wasn’t the behaviour of a man who faced no consequences if he were discovered.

“He’s a man, Genny,” Myrtle continued. “He’s a very powerful man.”

Geneva shook her head and sat back down. “That’s not right.” He hadn’t acted like a powerful man. He had acted like a hunted one.

Myrtle touched Geneva’s knee. “I thought you liked him for Führer.”

“I did,” Geneva said. “I do. But if he’s corrupt, we ought to know about it.”

Myrtle laughed. “Oh, so now he’s corrupt? Genny, this is why…” She shook her head and sighed. “Never mind.”

Geneva grunted and threw herself against the back of the sofa as heat climbed the back of her neck. “Just say it.”

Myrtle put her hand on Geneva’s. “This is why they won’t move you upstairs.” 

Geneva pulled her hand away and marched to the bedroom where she could slam the door and get away from another verbal blockade, but she heard Myrtle stand and follow her.

“You get carried away and start making assumptions before you have any proof!” Myrtle ran in front of Geneva and put her hands on her shoulders. “What did you see? He put his hand on—“ She held up a finger. “Almost. He almost touched her. It could be nothing.”

“Then why did he look scared?” Geneva stepped back from Myrtle and tugged at the sleeve of her cardigan. “He looked too scared for something that has no consequences—“

“I didn’t say it had no consequences.” Myrtle shrugged. “Oh, for him, sure. He gets a slap on the wrist. But her?” She pressed her perfectly rouged lips together and shook her head. “Best case, she gets reassigned, and her new office is hell because they all know. Worst case, the same happens, and the media drags her through the mud, and—”

“Why do you care?” Geneva demanded. She hated the conversation. She hated that Myrtle was taking such pains to protect Mustang and his aide instead of being supportive.

Myrtle threw her hands out. “Why don’t you? You remember what happened to Della Zalesky?” 

Of course, Geneva remembered what happened to Della Zalesky, the Central University graduate who had worked as an aide for a Parliament member from the West until the politician had fired her. Geneva’s predecessor at the _Eastern Review_ had uncovered the affair between the young girl and the older, married politician and had become an overnight legend amongst reporters. Geneva could not remember the politician’s name, but Della Zalesky was a cautionary tale. The last Geneva had heard, the young woman had been unable to find decent work due to her reputation and press-hounding, and she had moved to work in an isolated, country textile mill.

“Maybe—” Myrtle grabbed Geneva’s hands and squeezed them. “Maybe you saw two people in love who aren’t able to do anything about it.”

Geneva shook her head. Roy Mustang wasn’t like them, pretending their relationship was less than it was in front of parents—in front of Myrtle's father, in particular—who were stuck in archconservative mindsets. Mustang never had to hide, and he would be sure his own influence would protect him. He might even be sure his influence would protect her. “No.” Then he would not have looked at her the way he had. Unless there was more to the relationship than she had initially supposed. Her heart thudded with the realization, and she looked up. “There’s something there, Myrtle. There’s something else hiding under all of this. I know it.”

Myrtle dropped Geneva’s hands and walked to the bedroom window.

Geneva’s chest tightened, and she bit the insides of her cheeks and lowered herself onto the bed. She whispered, “Why can’t you be on my side?”

Myrtle turned, walked back to Geneva, and sat next to her. “Alright,” she said, and she took Geneva’s hand. “You’re right. If you think there’s something there, you have to investigate it.”

Geneva smiled and squeezed Myrtle’s hand. They would always support one another in the end. She knew that. Her stomach rumbled, and she pressed a hand there.

“But you need to promise me something,” Myrtle said. “Promise me this won’t take over your life.”

Geneva nodded. Of course, it wouldn’t. 

“No,” Myrtle said. “No, look at me.” She put a hand on Geneva’s cheek and turned her head. “I know you,” she said in a way that made Geneva feel warm and bare all at once. “You get obsessed. Don’t let it happen.”

Geneva pressed her lips together and swallowed. She wouldn’t, no matter how certain she was or how difficult the investigation became. She would not become obsessed. “I promise.”

Myrtle kissed her once, and then sat back when Geneva’s stomach gurgled again. “So you’re really not hungry?”

Geneva giggled and patted her stomach. “Starving.” Then she let Myrtle take her hand and drag her into the kitchen.

Later that night, as she lay in bed, the possibility that Mustang was hiding more than just an affair would not let her go. She looked over at Myrtle, who slept beside her. She had promised her she would not get obsessed, and she wouldn’t. But that look General Mustang had given her...So she kissed Myrtle’s forehead just below the knot on the silk turban that covered her tight, black curls at night and left bed while taking care not to wake her.

She sat on the sofa and pulled a pen and notepad from her bag, and she wrote. She listed every question in her head, every route she needed to investigate, every possible angle she had then. And when grey morning light crept through the windows, she looked over pages of notes, and she smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Alright. Here it is. Like, I went on vacation for Chinese New Year about five weeks ago, and I have been narrowly dodging a global health crisis ever since. As you can probably imagine, being displaced and stranded in a different country because all flights home have been suspended until further notice has been stressful. My mind has been occupied with lots of…things. Which means I have not been writing. Until the last few days. So. Have a behemoth of a chapter as an apology. Thank you for your patience and for sticking around. I have zero intentions of dropping this. I’m just…stranded and things are weird. A virus has successfully upended my life. How are you?
> 
> I like hearing your comments and theories. Y’all are a fun crowd. You keep me going.


	10. Chapter 10

Alphonse jerked awake. The wailing seemed to come from all around him, and then sharp sobs began. He heard Edward walk past the bedroom door—the clank of automail and the dull, uneven footsteps were unmistakable. After a few more moments, the wailing ceased. The sobs faded.

It had been alarming the first night, but it was becoming routine. First, the baby—Trisha, he thought smiling, the baby Trisha—would wake up hungry. Next, her cries would rouse Yuriy, who would cry until Edward soothed him while Winry breastfed Trisha. Alphonse would manage to get back to sleep for a few hours, and then it would start again.

The fourth day after Trisha’s birth, he had asked Edward how long it would last.

“Who knows, really?” Edward had said. “Don’t have kids.”

But Alphonse had seen how Edward beamed at his children, and he knew that his brother and Winry somehow found months of sleepless nights worthwhile.

Alphonse and Mei had talked about children, and they had agreed to wait. Still, they had discussed that future, until just a few months ago when those discussions had stopped.

Everything had stopped. There had been fewer conversations, less intimacy. She was always tired or disinterested. She put on a brave face in public, she laughed and smiled and chatted like nothing was wrong, she held his hand and behaved as normal, but when they were alone, she was distant. They were crammed into Winry’s childhood bed and closer than they had been in weeks.

He looked at Mei, who was sleeping with her back to him. He raised his hand and touched her shoulder, but she mumbled something and scooted closer to the wall.

He flopped onto his back and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he wanted to scream.

He had heard that a tragedy in the first few years of a marriage could be devastating for a relationship. He had never thought it would happen to his marriage. He had never thought Mei would hate him, as she surely must, and he—

He needed a drink of water. He ran his hands down his face and swallowed. If he could drink some water, he could push it all down, go back to sleep, and wake up pretending everything was normal and that their respite in Resembool after months of stress and constant motion hadn't illuminated the quiet disintegration of his marriage.

He slipped from the bed and stole downstairs to the kitchen, where he grabbed a tin cup from a cabinet and reached for the tap.

“Hey.”

Alphonse jumped. “Shit!” The cup clattered onto the floor, and he grasped the edge of the counter.

“What?”

He turned his head and glared at the table, where his brother sat in darkness. “Nothing,” he hissed. He took a few breaths to calm his racing heart. “Why are you…being creepy?”

Edward yawned and pointed to the range. “I’m making Winry some tea. It helps her get back to sleep.”

Alphonse had been so focused that he hadn't noticed the dull blue flame under the teakettle. He nodded and bent over to pick up the cup. He dusted off the rim with his wrist.

He might have noticed, though, if his idiot brother hadn’t decided to sit in complete darkness like some sort of mad recluse. Or a bat. He reached for the light switch near the door.

“Don’t,” Edward said. “It hurts.”

Alphonse rolled his eyes. Then he filled his cup from the tap and joined Edward at the table.

Edward yawned, smacked, and asked, “Did they wake Mei up too?”

Alphonse shook his head. “I don’t think so.” It was the first time since Trisha’s birth that Mei had not awoken to the crying. “How did you go through this with Yuriy and still volunteer for a second round?”

Edward yawned again and looked up at the ceiling. “This is the worst part.”

“I thought washing nappies was the worst part.”

Edward shrugged. “There are a lot of worst parts.” He smiled. “There are also a lot of best parts.” Then his smile grew into a self-satisfied smirk, and he leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “You’ll get it.”

Alphonse rolled his eyes. His brother couldn’t sit there and pretend to be the more mature of the two, like he had uncovered some great universal secrets Alphonse would have to learn when he was older, as if his thirteen months on Alphonse afforded him thirteen years more wisdom. 

Then again, Edward hadn’t nearly ruined diplomatic relations between two countries due to his inability to do his job. He hadn’t destroyed his wife’s relationship with her entire family, and he hadn’t been the reason why she had needed to flee her homeland. 

He tapped the outside of his cup. “Do you think she hates me?”

Edward sat up. “Trisha? I don’t think she really feels that yet, much less—”

“No.” He looked out the window, where grey lined the horizon. “Mei.”

“Oh,” Edward said, and that was all he said.

Alphonse waited for more of Edward’s brotherly wisdom, but when it didn’t come, he drained his water and stood up to drop the cup in the sink. He would wash it in the morning, but he only wanted to sleep. To sleep and wake up and pretend that things were fine, because maybe if he pretended long enough, things would be fine.

Then Edward said, “How should I know?”

Alphonse placed his hands on the metal rim of the sink and squeezed his eyes shut. It was not a straightforward answer, but he understood. If Edward had thought it impossible, he would have said so.

“That’s not—” The kettle’s whistle cut Edward off, and he busied himself behind Alphonse’s back. A cup hit the counter, water sloshed, and Edward must have burned himself because he let out a long string of expletives. After things quieted, Edward said, “No, I don’t think she hates you. But I’m also not the person you should be asking.”

He patted Alphonse’s shoulder on his way out of the kitchen.

Alphonse hung his head and sighed. His brother was right, of course. He needed to speak with Mei about it, and he needed to do it before he managed to deal further irreparable damage to their relationship.

He snuck back upstairs and into the bedroom, where she still slept. He sat on the edge of the bed and listened to her slow and shallow breathing. Then he lay down next to her and turned onto his side.

“Mei?” He shook her shoulder, and she moaned and tugged the blankets tighter around her body. “Mei,” he said again as he shook harder.

She murmured something he couldn’t make out and buried her face in the pillow.

“What?” he asked. She grunted in response. “Mei.”

She smacked his hand away from her shoulder. “Kuang…” She yawned and slurred the next words, “Shou fu.” Please…shut up.

Alphonse pressed his lips together and watched her back rise and fall. “Mei,” he tried again. “Zhe gao tuan yi wu deng zi.” I want to ask you something.

“Liu ke zaixing,” she told him. Go back to sleep.

He let himself fall back, the feather pillow ballooning around his face as his head hit it. He stared at the wood grain in the ceiling support beams, just visible in the early morning light. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep until they spoke about it.

Mei shifted beside him. Then she turned over and leaned across him to grab the alarm clock off the nightstand. She peered at the time, sighed, and put the clock back while she let her forehead fall on his chest.

“Xiezhi?” she said, her voice rocky with sleep and annoyance. “Yi gao tuan zhe xiezhi?”

He wrapped his arms around her and revelled in the fact that, at that moment, she was not shrinking away from him. There were so many things he wanted to ask, and he could not figure out the best way to phrase any of them. He licked his lips and swallowed. What if she said “yes”?

Mei raised her head and watched him.

He reached up and tucked her long hair behind her ear. He should just get it over with. “Do you blame me?”

“For waking me up?” she asked. “Very much.”

Alphonse shook his head. “No. For…” He waved his hand. “Everything.”

Mei sat up at that. She switched on the lamp on the bedside table and tucked her feet underneath her. “Alphonse—”

“I get it,” he said as he blinked away the stinging from the sudden light. “I should have tried harder, and I shouldn’t…” He took a deep breath and looked at her, at the deep frown on her face. “I mean, your family…”

She pressed her lips together and looked out the window, then back at him with a smile. “This is my family.”

His stomach tightened, and he grunted. “You know what I mean.”

She dropped her head. “We don’t have to do this.”

“We do!” he said, and he stood up and shook his hands out by his sides while he paced and fought for breath. “We do, because I feel like I’m going crazy. You won’t even look at me!” He turned to her then, but she kept her head bowed. He raked his fingers through his hair. He wanted to pull it out and scream. “And I know you blame me for everything, and you must hate me. I mean…”

Her head snapped up, and she watched him with wide eyes.

It was unfair of her to look at him like she was surprised. It cooled the heat on his skin and loosened the tightness in his chest. He took a few breaths and asked, “Don’t you?”

For a good while she just stared at him, long enough that his palms tingled and he had to wipe them on his pant legs. His breath shook in his chest, and he asked, “Well?”

She swallowed. “You think—” Her shoulders heaved and she looked down at her lap before clapping her hands over her mouth and letting out a muffled, “Gui erqun.”

His whole body froze, and he could not understand why she would say that. She had no reason to apologize, not when everything had been his fault. “Mei,” he said.

She shook her head and repeated, “Gui erqun.” She shook with a sob.

“Hey.” He sat back on the edge of the bed, and she fell into his chest, gripped the front of his shirt, and cried. His arms felt heavy as he wrapped them around her. “Ban hua,” he said, but he did not know if he was comforting her or himself. He buried his face in her hair and said, “Ban hua. Ban jiaole.”

In time, her sobs subsided, and her hold loosened. The sky outside lightened to a grey-blue, and birds called to one another.

He ran his hand down her back, and he supposed she had fallen back to sleep and left him with more questions than he had in the beginning. At least she had not pulled away from him. That was good.

Then she shifted and said, “Can we not talk to anyone else today?”

He stilled his hand on her back.

She continued, “Can we go somewhere? Just the two of us, and…” She buried her face against his chest and wrapped her arms around his middle.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Sure. We can do that.” There were plenty of secluded areas he knew around Resembool, secret places he and Edward had frequented while playing truant or practising alchemy.

Mei sighed, and her shoulders dropped, but she did not let him go. Alphonse leaned back against the carved headboard and thought that perhaps she didn’t hate him after all.  


* * *

Mustang raised his hand and knocked.

Gracia Hughes had moved three times in the last eight years, usually to someplace older, always to someplace smaller. A widow’s pension was not much to live on.

The outside of the new building, however, looked cleaner and nicer than the last one, which meant her job must have been paying well. The front hall had a polished stone floor, and the stairs to the first storey had a wrought-iron balustrade.

He knocked again on the door to her second storey flat and wondered if she was home. He would have telephoned, but since his arrival in Central two days before, Charlie had been dragging him to luncheons and coffee meetings and short interviews. There had been no time to call and let her know he was coming by as he always did when he was in town.

“Coming!” Gracia called.

He straightened his collar. He would not stay long. He was only calling to ask if she would attend the ambassador’s welcome party with him, if Elicia was doing alright in school, and if she needed anything. Hawkeye was outside with the rented automobile, and he didn’t want to ask her to wait long.

Gracia opened the door with a bright smile. “Did you—” She froze, and her smile faltered. “Roy.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting…” She took a deep breath, and her smile returned. “It’s so nice of you to drop by when you must be so busy here in town.”

He waved her comment away. He should have called first, but he did not know when he would next have a spare moment. “I have a meeting later, but I have time.”

“Oh, well.” She leaned against the doorjamb and tucked her short hair behind her ear. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. I’m sure it’s important.”

He smiled at her. “I set aside some time so I could stop by on my way. I wanted to see you and Elicia.”

“Oh,” she said. She brushed her hair back from her face. “How thoughtful.”

He waited for Gracia to invite him in, as she usually would, but she only stared at him with that immovable smile on her face. It occurred to him that she might not be prepared for visitors. He pointed over his shoulder. “Should I—”

“No, come in!” she said, and she opened the door wider and stepped into her apartment.

He followed her and closed the front door behind him. There were boxes from the recent move stacked in one corner of the sitting room, and there was a basket of folded laundry on a brown sofa.

Gracia grabbed something off a wooden chair and threw it into a closet. She pressed her back against the closet door and smoothed down her hair. “It’s a bit of a mess,” she said, and she waved at the boxes. “I’m still unpacking.”

Mustang nodded. “That’s alright. I should have telephoned, anyway.”

She smoothed down the front of her dress and exhaled. “It really is nice of you to drop by.” She tucked her bobbed hair behind her ear and started for an open doorway. “Coffee?”

“No,” he said as he went after her into a small kitchen. “I couldn’t impose—”

“I’ve made more than enough,” she said, and she grabbed a full press off the counter. “And you should have some before you head out.”

He hummed and looked at a table shoved into one corner of the room. “Perhaps just one, then.”

She nodded and grabbed one of two mugs set on the table and filled it halfway before handing it to him and gesturing to a chair.

It was a small serving, and as he sat, he thought she felt he should rush. “I have time,” he assured her.

She sat in another chair and folded her hands on the table. “Do you?” She sighed and nodded. “That’s good.”

For a few moments, they sat in silence. She watched the front door, then her shoulders fell, and she sighed and rose to pour herself a cup of coffee.

“How’s Elicia?” Mustang asked.

“Good,” Gracia said, her voice slow and distant. “She’s good.” She stirred cream into her mug. “She’ll be back soon.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. While before she had seemed anxious to spur him on his way, at that moment, she seemed almost resigned to his presence. He wondered if he had done something more than calling unannounced. “Gracia, is something wrong?”

She sat again, shook her head, and folded her hands under her chin. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” She took her mug and tilted it toward her as if she could see answers to her own problems in the cloudy coffee. “I suppose…” She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling and said, “I’m not sure how to begin.”

He heard the latch on the front door turn, and then Elicia called, “Mama! We’re back!”

Gracia leapt up, and her chair legs scraped on the wooden floor. She rushed into the sitting room and said, “So soon!”

Mustang followed her and saw Elicia waving a brown paper package while a clean-cut gentleman he had never seen before closed the door behind them.

Elicia smiled wide when she saw Mustang. “Roy!” She flew across the room and threw her arms around his middle.

He patted her back. “Hey, kid.” He held her shoulders and pushed her back so he could look at her. He always searched for traces of her father in her face, though he knew there were none. Elicia was a shorter version of her mother, though she was less short than she had been the last time he had seen her. “Wow, you’re getting tall. What is your mother feeding you?”

Elicia laughed. “Anthony has been feeding me pastries.” She held up the paper bag and added, “We just bought some.”

Mustang looked over her head at “Anthony,” who stood near the door and engaged in low conversation with Gracia.

The other man patted his head and looked at the chair by the door. “Where’s my—”

“It’s fine,” Gracia said, and she tapped his arm. “Elicia, go set the table.”

Elicia, though, had reached the age when kids begin to test their parents’ authority, and she whined, “But, Mama—”

Gracia cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows, and Elicia rolled her eyes and stomped into the kitchen. Gracia gave Mustang an apologetic smile before pulling Anthony toward him. “Roy,” she said, “this is Anthony Dawes. We work together.”

He was not an idiot. He knew work was not the only thing they did together.

“Anthony,” Gracia said, “this is General Roy Mustang.”

Anthony grinned and stuck out his hand. “The Roy Mustang?”

Mustang felt his arm shake, and he realized he had reacted to the handshake on instinct. He pulled his hand back and curled it into a fist by his side.

“I’ve heard so much about you from the girls.”

That made one of them. Mustang took a deep breath that did not fill his lungs. “Is that right?”

“Oh! And I—” Anthony stopped as he dug into his trousers pocket. “Hang on.” In a moment he produced a wrapped piece of Lehman’s chewing gum. “Ha!” he said as if having candy in one’s pockets was a great victory.

Then he flipped it over, and Mustang saw that a tiny picture of himself and a ridiculous slogan decorated the back. His neck tightened. He’d have to remember to kill Charlie later. “Well, look at that,” Mustang said.

Gracia touched Anthony’s elbow and said, “Why don’t you go help her?”

Mustang looked at a bookshelf on one wall while they had a rushed, whispered conversation. There was a framed Medal of Bravery on one of the shelves, a posthumously-awarded Führer’s Cross, and several photographs. Most of them were of Elicia in her later childhood. Elicia's graduation from primary school. Elicia holding a bunch of sunflowers at Gracia’s parents’ Western farm. Elicia and Gracia near some river he did not know. There was one photograph with Maes, and it was a family photograph from when Elicia had been two.

It made sense that Gracia would trade older photographs for more recent memories. He should have noticed years earlier. Time had not stopped for them, though he had not realized until that moment how much he had expected it to.

“Gracia,” he said.

“You know I’ve been doing clerical work at the factory?” she said, smoothing down the front of her dress. “He’s the head of accounts.”

He took a step toward her. “Gracia—”

“It’s not the most glamourous job, I know,” she continued. She pressed a hand to her chest. “But he’s a good man. And Elicia likes him. I just—”

“Why didn’t you ever mention him?” he asked.

Gracia gave a tight smile and shrugged. “Well, we only met this spring, and…” Her voice caught, and her smile faltered. She looked at the floor when she said, “I know you loved him, and I didn’t want you to think that…” She trailed off and shook her head.

“To think what?” he asked. His thumb twitched and, as casually as he could, he massaged his hand behind his back before the pains and spasms could begin. “That you had forgotten him?”

Her head snapped up. “I haven’t,” she said. “And I haven’t stopped loving him. I don’t think I ever will. And I know it’s been eight years, but I still…” She took a deep breath. “I’m not ready to tell his family, even though I know I should. Those are her grandparents. But I just want…” She pressed her lips together and blinked rapidly. “It’s complicated.” She pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks and said, “Oh, you must think so little of me now.”

Mustang closed his eyes and wondered what Maes would say if he knew.

He had known Maes for a long time, longer than Gracia had, and in some ways, he had known him better. He had known a man who was willing to sacrifice his morality to have Gracia, who was willing to slaughter without question if it meant he could go home to her. He had known a man who rejected any challenge to that thought and would not even let himself consider the implications of his actions or feel remorse. That man had been complacent in his role as a perpetrator of violence. While he had supported Mustang’s ideals, he had not shared them.

There was a part of Maes Hughes that Mustang was not certain Gracia had ever known, but he was certain she did not deserve to know it. She deserved to remember the best of her late husband. She deserved happiness.

So instead Mustang considered what he would want.

He knew Hawkeye dated other people, just as he had done for fifteen years. He had always understood that it was unfair to ask her to be lonely and to wait for him, but he felt sick thinking about her with someone else.

Still, if he were dead, he wouldn’t think about it. The dead paid no mind to the living, and the dead never returned.

So he spoke for himself when he said, “I knew him for a long time, and more than anything, he wanted you two to be happy.” He opened his eyes and added, “He wouldn’t want you to be in mourning and alone for the rest of your life.”

Gracia swallowed and nodded. “Thank you.” She wiped her eyes with her thumbs.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said again, and she dabbed tears away. She folded the handkerchief and offered it back, but he held up his hand to indicate she should keep it. She smiled and tucked it into her dress pocket. “I am happy.”

“Good,” he said. The pressure in his chest lessened a little, and he remembered that he had a meeting and that he had left Hawkeye outside and that he was very much the intruder in Gracia’s life that day. “I should go. I should have called.”

She waved her hand. “No, it’s fine.” She showed him to the door.

On his way out, he turned and said, “I came by for a reason.” In his shock, he had forgotten the purpose of his visit. “There’s a party for the Cretan Ambassador at the end of the month, and I’m supposed to attend with a beautiful woman on my arm.” His reputation and responsibilities were the return to normalcy they both needed.

Gracia laughed. “Oh!” She held one hand to her chest. “I’d be honoured. As long as you don’t mind my attending underdressed.”

He clicked his tongue. “I’m sure you’ll be the loveliest by far regardless of what you wear.” He gave her a teasing wink, and she laughed again.

“Are you leaving?” Elicia called from inside the apartment.

Gracia stepped to the side, and Elicia ran to the door with a pout on her face.

“I am,” he said. “It was just a quick trip to see your mom. But I’ll be back soon.”

“How soon?” Elicia asked. She brightened. “The summer fair is still happening. We could go.”

Mustang looked at Gracia, who nodded her approval. He’d have to talk with Neumann, who might have scheduled more events, and figure out when he would have a free evening. “I’ll make sure that happens.” He wondered if they would be a party of three or four.

“Promise?” Elicia asked.

He smiled. “Absolutely.”

Anthony approached from behind Elicia and said, “It was nice meeting you.”

Mustang shook his hand a second time and said, “Nice meeting you too.” Then he turned to Gracia and gave her a quick hug. “Take care.”

She patted his back. “Thank you. You too.”

He pulled away and, with one last wave, descended the stairs to the ground floor and left the building.

Hawkeye waited for him next to the rented automobile. She stood still in her uniform, almost invisible to passersby. She possessed that uncanny sniper’s talent of disappearing into the scenery while she kept watch.

She would have seen Elicia enter the building with Anthony, and she was not an idiot. She met his eyes and her mouth pressed into a thin line. He nodded. She already knew.

Without speaking, they slid into the automobile, and she started the engine and drove away.

Mustang leaned his face against his fist and watched trees and brick houses rush past them. He could see the continued construction on the new, tall buildings—Roth, his press secretary, had called them “skyscrapers”—in the distant financial district.

He wondered if he had said the right thing. He wondered what Hughes would tell him if he were alive. He wondered if he had been kind to Gracia, letting her live with happiness instead of with truth.

Hawkeye had sworn on multiple occasions that she would follow him even into hell. But what if he were dead? The thought that she would follow him even then was not a reality he could accept. If he were dead, he would rather she break her vows. What would she say or do if he ordered her at that moment not to follow him anymore? Would it be a kindness to release her, or would it be a cruelty to them both? 

“Am I a kind person?”

“Sir?” Hawkeye said.

He shifted to sit straight and face the windscreen. “I figured you’d give me an honest answer.”

He could not see her face, but she tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. “You can be exceptionally kind, Sir.”

He hummed. “That’s not really the same thing, though, is it?” When she did not reply, he said, “Like you. You’re a kind person. It’s instinctive for you to just…” He searched for a less redundant way to speak his thoughts, but had to settle for, “react with kindness.” He looked at her then, at her brown eyes watching the road. “Which is different from ‘can be kind,’ I think.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Does it matter, Sir? If the end result is the same?”

He looked away again. “I suppose not.” It did not answer his real questions, though: had he been kind in lying? Had he lied at all?

“You can be very kind, Sir,” she said after a moment. “But sometimes you conflate kindness and causing the least pain in the present.”

He snorted, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. It was not a criticism she had levied at him before, but it was one he could live with.

He let the rocking of the automobile lull him. He had been informed on his arrival in the city that the Führer would convene the Generals’ Council to discuss the threat of the Amestrian Freedom Army, and before he faced the other generals, he would like a short nap. He needed to relax after his morning and after two days of campaigning. He trusted Hawkeye would not wake him until they had arrived at the Führer’s residence, where his office had been moved during the first steps to pull the military away from governance.

He had been to the residence twice since then, though Grumman had always received him in a conference room or a sitting room meant for entertaining various dignitaries.

“Sir,” Hawkeye said, her voice low and gentle. “We’re here.”

He blinked his eyes open and stifled a yawn, then got out of the automobile and led the way up the walk to the guard gate. One of the men on duty took their identification badges, scanned a page in a leather folder, and picked up a telephone.

“Confirming General Roy Mustang’s clearance for today,” the man said into the receiver.

“And Major Riza Hawkeye,” Mustang told him. He had requested many times that she be allowed in with him.

The man nodded but said nothing more before he hung up and handed their badges back. “You’re cleared, Sir.” Then he looked at Hawkeye and said, “You too, Ma’am. You’ll need to check all weapons either of you has and leave them here.”

Hawkeye complied, slipping off holsters and filling in the appropriate paperwork. The man had not said her name, and there could have been only one reason.

As they walked toward the colonnade surrounding the white, stone house, Mustang said, “You must have permanent clearance.” He did not have that, but the Führer was her maternal grandfather. They may have been estranged family, but they were family nonetheless.

She did not respond, so he turned to look at her. Her gaze flitted between the columns, watching the shadows cast by the morning sun.

It occurred to him then that she had not been back to the house since her encounter with Pride, a creature that had embodied shadows and had threatened and terrorized her on those grounds eight years earlier. “Hawkeye,” he said, and she blinked and looked at him as if she were surprised to see him there. He remembered what she had said about how he could be exceptionally kind. “You don’t have to come in.”

She clicked her tongue and smiled, just a little. They had just talked about conflating, and he was doing it again.

He looked up at the clear sky and sighed. “Thought I’d offer.” He started for the house again. It had been another palace during the monarchy, though it was smaller and less lavish than those that had been repurposed as military headquarters. The trims were painted a friendly green, and ivy and climbing roses scaled the outside walls. It looked inviting and not at all like a place that had historically housed the most powerful people in the country. “Though you will have to wait outside the meeting room.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I’ll yell if I need you.” He saw a staff member waiting at the main entrance for them. They would be escorted at all times inside the building by someone who would ensure they only went where they were supposed to go.

Her only reply was, “Walk faster, Sir.”

The sudden urgency in her tone told Mustang everything he needed to know, and he picked up his pace. He was not fast enough, though.

“Mustang!” barked General Olivier Armstrong just as Mustang reached the door.

He turned with a grin he knew would annoy her and said, “Armstrong. You look radiant as ever.”

She halted in front of him and scowled. “Why haven’t you called me back.”

He could feel Hawkeye staring at him because she had told him several times he needed to call. “It’s so rude of me to keep a lady waiting.”

Armstrong scoffed and folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t have the patience for you today.”

The staff member at the door cleared his throat and mumbled, “Excu—”

“What?” Armstrong and Mustang spat.

The man gestured inside, and the generals followed him into the house. 

Mustang said, “I’ve been busy.”

“With what?” Armstrong demanded.

Mustang waved a hand because he did not have the patience for her either. “Running the East. Starting a campaign.” Armstrong should have heard of the second. He knew she had the same ambitions and might be starting her own soon enough.

The staff member led them through hallways filled with state gifts and national artwork. When Mustang finally lived there, he’d take the time to appreciate it all.

“How nice,” she said. “I’ve been running the North, holding down an armistice, and investigating an internal threat.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her brush the long, blonde, Armstrong family curl from her forehead. “Why haven’t you called me?”

He chose to ignore the question and pose one of his own. “That’s quite the checklist. When you announce your campaign, you’ll have to give up either yelling at me or sleeping.”

“When I what?”

“Which one will it be?” He inclined his head toward her. “Because I think you’ll give up sleeping.” He looked at Hawkeye and asked, “What do you think, Major?”

Hawkeye narrowed her eyes at him as if to tell him to not drag her into his personal quarrels. He remembered the word she used on the train: petty—what a ridiculous word to describe him.

Armstrong turned as well and seemed to see Hawkeye for the first time. “You’re still working for him?”

Hawkeye nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”

Armstrong hummed. “That’s a shame.” Then she turned back as they started down another corridor that Mustang knew from experience led to a conference room. “I’m not announcing a campaign.”

He darted his eyes toward her to see if she was serious, and he saw she was doing the same to him.

She shrugged and turned her gaze away. “Drachma is pounding on our door and itching to attack. I’d have to relocate the entire government to North City because no one else in this country is competent enough to hold the border.” Then she flashed him a rare, sarcastic smile. “But it doesn’t matter because I’ll just crush you in five years.”

He smiled back. She was banking on his winning, then, if she anticipated a fight during the next election. “Can I count on your support?”

She barked a laugh. “I’m not doing you any favours.”

He picked up the pace when he saw General Fischer outside of a doorway to a conference room. Fischer was a broad, hard-faced man who had taken over management of the South seven years earlier. Mustang liked him well enough, but he was not sure, even after so many years of being on the General Council together, that he trusted him.

Armstrong said, “And don’t think I haven’t forgotten—”

“General Fischer,” Mustang called. Under any other circumstances, he would have saluted. Fischer was promoted before Mustang had been, and protocol dictated that though they held the same rank, Fischer was ranked higher. However, that meant Mustang would have to salute Armstrong as well, and he would always delight in denying her that.

He also knew Armstrong would go out of her own way to avoid saluting the other generals.

Fischer did not seem to mind the lack of an official greeting, and he smiled. “Good. You two made it. I was beginning to think you got lost.” He guffawed and stepped to the side of the door, allowing Armstrong to enter before he did.

Mustang moved to follow.

“Sir,” Hawkeye said behind him.

He turned and saw her holding his glasses in her outstretched hand. He did not know when she had managed to take them from his hotel room, but he would not be wearing them in public. 

He looked a few paces down the hall where a few other military adjutants had gathered. He did not know their names, but he knew that that one belonged to Maden, that one to Fischer, and that one to Hauser. Only Armstrong had arrived alone, but that was how the Ice Queen preferred to operate at council meetings.

He could imagine the things she would say if he walked in wearing glasses. “They’re not very presidential,” he said.

“Neither is squinting, Sir.” She looked at the glasses and back at him and raised her eyebrows.

He took them from her with a sigh and turned toward the conference room.

“Major Hawkeye!” one of the adjutants called. “When did you get here?”

Mustang heard her reply, “Hello, Weber,” before the door closed and cut off all outside noise. The conference room was longer than it was wide, with one long wall marked by several windows and the other by the door he had just come through and a second door. A wooden table surrounded by chairs filled the space, and one end of the room held a buffet table with an empty vase on top. Mustang remembered that in the early days of Grumman’s ascent to power, blooms from Mrs Bradley’s residence garden had filled vases like that one. He doubted anyone remembered to tend that garden anymore.

He tucked the glasses into his jacket pocket and took a leather-backed chair between Armstrong and Maden just in time to catch Hauser, red-faced and sprawling in his seat, finishing a rant.

“—ridiculous that we’re doing this here,” Hauser spat. “There was a time when matters of state security were discussed in military headquarters—”

“It’s been a long time since those days,” Maden said as he perused the meeting agenda in front of him.

“You weren’t even on the council then, Hauser,” Mustang said because he would rather listen to anything else. “Armstrong was the only one among us who was.” He picked up his own agenda and pulled out a pen and his journal.

Hauser looked at Mustang. “Maybe you can explain why we’re doing this here instead of—”

“Are you upset about walking ten minutes from your office?” Armstrong said as she drummed her fingers on the table.

Mustang smiled at his agenda. Armstrong thought the seat in Central was the cushiest, designed for the laziest of the country’s four-star generals. “And that’s saying something,” she had once told him while they were observing a joint-training. “Because you exist.”

“I heard your speech on the radio, Mustang,” Maden said beside him while Armstrong and Hauser bickered. “Very nice.”

Mustang nodded. “Thank you.”

Maden pulled out his own pen and paper for note-taking. “I’d like to talk with you about it after this.” He uncapped his pen and made a tick by one item on the agenda before adding, “If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Mustang said. He studied Maden out of the corner of his eye. Of the five generals, he and Maden were closest in age, though they were far apart in every other way. Maden was light complected, angular, and constrained. 

He was also the former commanding officer of the man who had recruited Breda and Fuery for an extra-government intelligence agency. He and Mustang appeared to have similar priorities in assembling their teams.

Time, and their conversation after the meeting, would determine if he were as trustworthy as Mustang wanted him to be.

“You should be aware that Hauser fancies himself the next Führer,” Maden murmured.

Mustang looked across the table, where Hauser threw his hands in the air and said something to Armstrong. Fischer, next to Hauser, put a hand on his arm while he tried to mediate. He was not the model of a respectable Führer, in Mustang’s opinion. “Hauser?” he asked.

Maden shrugged. “He was going on about it before you got here. He plans to announce it by the end of the week.”

Mustang rubbed his jaw and studied Hauser. If they were both running, they would split the council, and Mustang had been counting on the endorsements of the other generals. He would still have Armstrong—no matter how much they despised each other, there would always be a grudging respect between them—and he might have Maden if he understood the man’s intentions. But he was less certain about Fischer. Hauser and Fischer were closer with each other than they were with the others.

The second door opened, and Vogel entered. “I apologize for my tardiness.” He was skinny and sharp-featured, with greying temples and bright eyes. He made his way to the head of the table and sat in the chair Mustang had assumed was reserved for the Führer. Vogel opened a leather folder, passed out five stacks of paperclipped documents, and said, “Let’s get started.”

Amstrong stiffened, and he shared a look with her. No one had been planning to start anything without Grumman. As the Führer, he was the head of government and the military, and they had anticipated discussing national security and military matters with him, not his Minister.

“We’re here to discuss the group that hijacked all radio frequencies last week,” Vogel said. “If you’ll look at the agendas we’ve provided, you’ll see—”

Armstrong cleared her throat, and Vogel stopped speaking. Every head turned toward her, but she had never been one to shy away from attention. She sat cool and relaxed as she asked the only question worth asking: “When will the Führer be joining us?”

Vogel took his time flipping through the first few pages of his document stack before he answered. “He won’t be.”

Mustang’s shoulders tensed, and he sat straighter and narrowed his eyes.

“He’s very ill,” Vogel continued, “so you’re stuck with me.”

“He’s ill,” Mustang repeated. Vogel could not expect him to believe that, not again.

“Yes,” Vogel said, and he looked at each of the generals as if daring them to raise further questions. When none of them did, he said, “Moving on…”

Mustang pressed the tip of his pen against the stack of papers. How many times had the Führer been ill in the past few weeks? How many times would he listen to the same excuse before someone finally told him the truth?

He glanced to his side and saw that Armstrong had narrowed her eyes in suspicion. He leaned in and whispered, “Have you heard from him?”

“The Führer?” she said while Vogel read over a paragraph on the first page of his document stack. “Not directly. Not for months.”

He leaned back in his chair and scribbled down something Vogel had just said about assembling a task force. He could not be sure anyone had heard from the Führer. He could not even be sure Vogel had.

He knew the Minister to the Führer was lying about the Führer’s state. Something was happening in the residence, and if Vogel would not tell him what it was, he would have to discover it himself.

“What are you plotting?” Armstrong hissed.

“I’m getting to the bottom of this,” he said. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Are you going to stop me?”

She shrugged. “I don’t care if you get shot.” She tapped the pages in front of her. “Someone will have to distract our escort.”

She had made it abundantly clear that she would do nothing for him, so Mustang would have to devise a plan on his own. He spent the next twenty minutes half listening, half planning how he would get away. Every plan involved either using Hawkeye’s connection to Grumman, which he had promised her he would never do, or ducking away and acting like he belonged until he found what he was looking for, whatever that was.

It was all quite maddening.

His thoughts were interrupted by Armstrong’s upbraiding Vogel. She had her own agenda in addition to the topic of the day, and she was unafraid of pushing for it.

Vogel took a deep breath and told her, “The Führer is not approving the manufacture of aeroplanes for the military. Drachma will take it as a sign of aggression, and we risk—”

Armstrong slammed one hand on the table. “We will see a war with Drachma within the year whether the Führer likes it or not.” Mustang understood by her tone that when she had said “the Führer” she had meant Vogel. “And it’s going to be fought in the air. We can be prepared, or we can be bombed out of our homes.”

Vogel shook his head. “We have not developed any plans for production—“

She gestured to Mustang. “Alphonse Elric just arrived from Xing with an aeroplane. There are your plans for—”

“Hold on,” Mustang said, his temperature rising. “Don’t pull him into this. He’s not a pawn.”

Armstrong rolled her eyes. “Says the man who threw him across the desert without a second—”

“That was different,” he said. Edward Elric had once been under his command and, therefore, his protection. The same principle extended to his brother. They were not her pawns. “There was a need, and he was already there to—”

“Why is he back so suddenly, Mustang?” Hauser asked from across the table.

Vogel cleared his throat because the reason behind Alphonse’s return looked just as bad for him as it did for Mustang. “We’re getting off—”

Mustang leaned back in his chair and stared at Hauser. “He was recalled for his safety.”

Hauser scoffed. “His safety? The boy got himself married to that Xingese princess! Was he in danger in his palaces—”

“Are you unaware,” Armstrong said to Hauser, “that the East is having its own conflicts?”

Mustang was surprised that Armstrong had come to his defence, but he was glad of it because it meant she hated Hauser more than she hated him.

“It may be hard to imagine from your cosy office here in Central,” Maden said, “but there’s a lot of tension abroad.”

Hauser sneered at him. “I know that.”

“How are your problems with Creta coming?” Fischer asked Maden. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

Maden folded his arms across his chest. “We’re entertaining the new ambassador this month, aren’t we? I must be handling it alright.”

“Enough!” Vogel shouted. “You can fight amongst yourselves later. For now, we’re going to stick to the problem at hand.” He looked each of the generals in the eye. “Got it?”

Mustang frowned. Vogel seemed quite comfortable in a position of authority. Too comfortable. 

“You’ve really settled in, haven’t you?” Armstrong asked, giving voice to Mustang’s thoughts.

Vogel had the grace to look abashed for a moment, then he squared his shoulders and said, “Moving on…”

Mustang looked at Armstrong next to him. She stared at Vogel while the tip of her pen hovered over her packet. He opened his mouth, unsure if what he meant to whisper was a thanks for covering for Alphonse or a comment about her promise to not do him any favours.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she hissed.

He nodded. In her own way, she must have been mildly concerned about the boys. “They have an uncanny ability to make friends.”

She scribbled something in a margin. “They certainly didn’t learn that from you.”

He could not help how his chest ballooned and his smile spread.

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Believe me,” he whispered back. “I didn’t take it as one.”

The meeting continued, Vogel asking questions about the insurgent threat and the generals answering with their own theories and strategies. Mustang added his own voice when it was necessary, but he let his thoughts drift to how he would get away from the escort after the meeting. He would not leave Führer.

When the clock tower down the street chimed out the next hour, Vogel jumped up and announced that he had another meeting. Then he left through the second door before Mustang had time to question him.

Armstrong rose and said, “You better tell me everything you find.” Then she marched from the room and shouted for the aide who had escorted them.

He fought back a smile. Even when they were at each other’s throats, they made a decent team. He called for Hawkeye.

She entered, saluting Hauser and Fischer as they passed on their way out the door. 

He tucked his journal into his pocket and passed her the stack of papers with a few of his handwritten additions. “Here are my notes. Can you get these typed up?” He knew she had no access to a typewriter while they were in Central, but he was stalling, and based on the way her mouth curved, she understood.

“Of course, Sir.”

He turned around and said, “General Maden.”

Maden waited for him near the door, and he stepped forward, doubtless ready for the promised conversation. 

Mustang, however, had more pressing matters to address. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m afraid I’ve remembered a prior engagement with my team regarding…” He looked to Hawkeye because the lie would be more believable if it came from her.

She did not disappoint. “Scheduling conflicts, Sir.”

He smiled at Maden and repeated, “Scheduling conflicts.”

Maden nodded and, without smiling, offered a handshake. “Well, I’m sure we’ll see each other again before too long.” Then he left the way the others had gone.

Mustang bent back over the table and stared at the papers to give the illusion of dedication to their contents. “Where’s Armstrong?”

“She’s talking with the aide, Sir.”

He smiled and looked at Hawkeye. “Talking?”

She tilted her head to one side and dropped her eyes to fight a smile. “In her way.”

Shouting was a better descriptor, then. He pulled all the papers into a stack and tapped them against the tabletop to straighten them.

When Hawkeye took them from him, she said, “Sir, if I may?”

He hummed to allow her to speak freely because when had his denial ever stopped her?

“This is a very bad idea,” she said. “You could be in immense and very public trouble.”

He nodded as he thought about that outcome. Charlie would be furious if he were caught entering the Führer’s living quarters without permission, and the press, and apparently Hauser, would be delighted. “That’s true.” He would have to explain everything, but he was certain that when he found Führer Grumman, the old man would defend him. He might even be granted special clearance as Hawkeye had. He looked at her. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, always ready to follow him even in his most outrageous moments.

And follow him she did, out of the second door and down a hallway.

He thought that if he were allocating apartments, he would place them far from the entrance, far from working offices. That would ensure privacy and quiet. He would place them on a higher storey. That would ensure they were more difficult to get to for someone who had no business being there.

He did have business, though, so when they reached the end of the hall, he asked Hawkeye, “Do you know where any stairs are?”

“No, Sir,” she said.

Usually, the old palaces had stairs at the ends of wings, so he turned left. “You’ve been here more than I have.” Years earlier, she had worked under Führer Bradley for several months, and she had made occasional deliveries to the residence.

“Yes, Sir,” she allowed, “but I never made it past the foyer.”

He hummed and looked around. There were a few staff members in suits walking through the hall, but no one that looked like security detail. If he were guarding the leader of the country, he’d place a few more—

“Excuse me,” someone said behind him.

Mustang turned and saw a man dressed in a tweed jacket and holding a clipboard. His right hand hovered near his waistline. Mustang understood then that they were likely to run into more plainclothes security. They would have to be more careful.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the man said. “Who are you?”

Mustang squared his shoulders. The man was wrong because he was very much supposed to be there. “I’m Gen—”

“Riza Hawkeye,” said his aide, and he looked down at her, but her expression was a fixed mask. “I’m here to see the Führer.”

It made more sense if it was her, he reminded himself, and he ignored the tugging in his gut. She had a higher clearance. She was Grumman’s family, his blood.

The man flipped through pages on his clipboard and eyed her over the top of it. “Where’s your escort?”

Hawkeye shook her head. “We never had an escort.” 

The man shook his head, muttered something, and scanned his clipboard. Then he looked back up and said, “You’ll have to come with me.”

Mustang clenched his jaw, and he felt Hawkeye stiffen next to him.

She took a breath. “I ought to have the appropriate clearance—”

“Even so, Ma’am,” the security officer said, “I can’t let you go without an escort. And I’m not sure I can let him—” He nodded at Mustang, “—go at all.”

Mustang’s temperature rose, but Hawkeye spread her hand so her little finger just brushed his wrist. 

“I understand,” she said.

The man nodded and gestured down the hall, back the way they had come. “Then if you’ll follow me, Ma’am.”

Hawkeye looked at Mustang, tilted her head toward the man, and darted her eyes to the side. They would manage to break away soon.

They followed down the corridors, each one more crowded than the last. Then Mustang saw stairs at the end of the hallway, past the adjacent corridor the man was turning down. They would not have long to run for it, and there was another obstacle that concerned him.

He cleared his throat and raised his hand to his waist. What was the likelihood of the man’s using his weapon?

Hawkeye shook her head, looked around at the stream of staffers, and looked back at Mustang. The man wouldn’t fire with so many people around. There was too much risk.

Mustang jerked his head toward the stairs and raised his eyebrows. Hawkeye nodded once.

He ran. Someone shrieked and fell against the wall as he pushed past, and he heard the security officer shout for him to stop immediately. Mustang glanced back once to make sure Hawkeye was behind him, and he kept going. 

When he reached the stairs, he took them two at a time, going up one flight and then another, as high as they went. People dove out of his way, and he heard more voices ordering him to stop and someone screaming for backup.

On the last landing, there was a set of wooden doors, and he threw one open and barged into the next room.

A woman behind a wide desk jumped up and said, “You can’t—“

He clapped his hands together and touched the wall, letting the alchemical energy course through his fingers and into layers of plaster and wood. The wall cracked and exploded into the room, and the woman yelped and ducked while he charged through a second set of doors on the far side of the room.

Alchemy stopping before reconstruction. It was a trick he had learned years ago from an Ishvalan serial killer.

Hawkeye was still behind him when he reached the second room, so he closed the door behind them, clapped again, and fused the lock mechanism. They were sealed inside. 

He looked around and found they were alone in a sort of parlour. “The security is lacking.”

“Damn it,” Hawkeye muttered.

He turned toward her. She had taken her heels off at some point so she could run, and she balanced on one leg and bent her other behind her so she could examine the sole of her foot.

“Are you alright?” he asked. They had bolted up the stairs. Perhaps she had twisted her ankle.

“Fine,” she sighed as she slipped her heels back on. Then she added, “Sir.”

He nodded and looked around. “There will be other entrances.” They needed to keep moving and find Führer Grumman before someone else found them.

He did not wait for Hawkeye’s response as he marched down the hallway, past portraits of the previous Führers hanging on the wall. There had been seven since the military had overthrown the monarchy and established a stratocracy—none of them had been legitimate and, he suspected, none had been human.

He stopped at a set of elevator doors and used his alchemy to fry the circuitry in the button mechanism. He was no engineer, but he hoped it would be enough to prevent an elevator from reaching their floor.

There was an open set of double doors just past the elevator, and he stepped through them and looked around. It was an unremarkable room, a sort of waiting area for what lay beyond two doors opposite him, but a long table stretched against one wall. On the table sat a telephone, a steaming electric kettle, and a black, leather medical bag. He stepped toward the bag, determined to inspect its contents because it might have contained clues, and he heard the telephone ring and then the click of a latch from the closed doors.

His collar tightened around his neck, and he was jerked out of the room and slammed against an outside wall.

He pulled Hawkeye’s hand from his jacket and hissed under the continued ringing, “What the hell?”

She pointed toward the doorway. “We don’t know who that is!” she whispered as a cheery woman said, “Just going to get that!” Hawkeye pressed her back against the wall. “And there are no civilians around to prevent her from firing at you.”

The ringing stopped and the same woman, far less cheery, said, “Hello?”

He inched toward the doorway to peer into the room.

She was an older woman with greying hair tucked under a starched, white cap and wearing a neat blue dress with a white apron tied behind her back. She had her back to him while she poured hot water from the electric kettle into a porcelain teapot and rifled through her medical bag. Hawkeye’s concerns were unfounded then, for it was unlikely that a nurse would be armed.

“They’re coming here?” the woman asked.

He furrowed his brow and pulled himself back outside. “Why would there be a nurse here?”

Hawkeye blinked, and he could hear the bite in her whisper when she replied, “Perhaps he’s ill. Sir.”

He rolled his eyes and peeked back through the doorway, and Hawkeye did the same. “Why do I tolerate you?” His “illness” was too frequent for that to be a plausible explanation. Vogel would not be dodging and evading inquiry. Führer Grumman could not be ill. He was certain of that fact, and he was certain that the Führer was just beyond that little waiting room.

The nurse dumped a white powder into the tea kettle and threw something into the trash bin. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

His heart raced. Perhaps the Führer was ill, and perhaps he was ill by design. “What do you think that was?”

“Aspirin,” she said.

He sighed. It had been a foolish leap, but, he reminded himself, it was no more foolish than actually believing that the Führer had been ill for months. So he and Hawkeye were both fools.

“You send your men,” the nurse said, “but they don’t stay. It won’t be good for him. It will be too stressful.” He watched her pack a tray with the teapot, a teacup, and a sugar bowl. “And he won’t be pleased when he understands someone with such high clearance was manhandled out of the building when she was just—”

He looked down at Hawkeye, but she pulled away from the door and pressed her back against the wall. He had once been annoyed by Grumman’s clearance priorities, but it was no use being annoyed. The nurse knew Hawkeye might be allowed to see the Führer, and she did not seem to care for appropriate security protocols. He had promised her, but they didn’t have many options. “You might be able to get past her.”

Hawkeye shook her head and did not look at him. “It should be you.”

“No, I don’t,” the nurse said. “Now, I’ve got to go. Good day.” The receiver clicked against the cradle, the door creaked open and then closed.

Mustang entered the room again with Hawkeye behind him. He stared at the doors and wondered if there were a way for the nurse to call for security from the inside.

“It was aspirin,” Hawkeye said behind him as if that were their sole purpose in being in the room.

“He’s in there,” he said, and he reached for the door handle.

“Sir—”

The door opened, and the nurse, quite startled, took one step back. She adjusted quickly, though, and she said, “Excuse me. What are—”

He was insistent on going inside, and she was not going to stop him. He pushed past her, and she stumbled into the waiting room and called for him to stop while Hawkeye shouted, “General!”

He slammed the door behind him, cutting Hawkeye and the nurse off and sealing himself in a small sitting room decorated in a cosy style with springtime colours. A set of double doors opened on Mustang’s left to an elegant bedroom, and large windows dressed with heavy velvet curtains covered the wall before him.

The Führer stood at one of those windows and sipped from a green teacup. He was dressed in his military uniform and very much upright and mobile and healthy. He turned and smiled at Mustang. “Ah, General. Good morning.”

“Sir,” he replied as he struggled to collect his thoughts. The Führer was well, so why were they hiding him away? Was Grumman involved in the deception? Was he a prisoner in his own residence?

Grumman set his cup and saucer on a nearby accent table. “You must forgive me for not coming to greet you. I’ve been quite busy.”

Mustang could not see with what he had been busying himself. The tables and the desk in the room were clear of all papers. Only a chessboard sat on the low table before the sofa, and it was set for a new game.

Then Grumman said, “How are you finding the East?”

Mustang inhaled. It was an odd question. If the Führer meant that second, then Mustang was not finding the East to be anything at all, for they were not in the East. If the Führer meant in general, then Mustang had been finding the East well enough for fifteen years with few alterations beyond those he had made. “Sir?”

“Can I get them to bring you some coffee?” Grumman gestured to a sofa and sat in an armchair.

Mustang obliged and sat, but said, “No, thank you.”

Grumman nodded, picked up his own cup, and looked at a clock ticking on a bookshelf.

The ticking of the clock sounded off to Mustang, but he could not tell whether it was too fast or too slow. Or perhaps he was off. Perhaps he had been so determined to uncover some great conspiracy that finding the Führer well and competent had left him disconcerted.

“It’s early yet,” Grumman announced, and he adjusted his glasses. “Perhaps a game of chess while we wait for things to begin.”

Mustang nodded. Whatever explanation the Führer had for his continual absence would come, and he would indulge the old man in their favourite game while he waited. The familiarity might do him good. He looked down at the rows of black pieces in front of him and started planning his strategy.

Then, “Do you play, Sir?”

Mustang’s head snapped up, but Grumman sat back and watched him with an eerie calm. Was it a strategy? A way to unnerve him? A jab at his overwhelming loss record?

No, Mustang realized. It was none of those things. The ticking of the clock was not wrong. The Führer was. That smile was not his own. It was too formal, too stiff. Mustang noticed Grumman’s posture for the first time, open, deferential, as if Mustang were the superior in the room. And Grumman had called him “sir” and “general,” not “my boy” or any of the other nicknames he regularly used.

The answer was there, right in front of him, and his chest ached, and he clenched his fists because he could not see it. He did not want to see it.

The door opened as he whispered, “Do I play?”

“Sir,” Hawkeye said, breathless, from behind him.

Grumman’s false smile fell. His eyes warmed, and his eyebrows lifted. “Oh,” he breathed.

Mustang turned to tell her to go find Vogel, to make someone else find Vogel, and bring him into the room. Vogel would explain everything, and even if he would deny a four-star general, no one denied the Flame Alchemist.

But Grumman moved first. He rose to his feet, stepped past Mustang, and said, “Oh, my darling girl.”

Mustang’s stomach sank, and he watched, unable to move, as Grumman rushed toward her and pulled her into a desperate embrace. He met Hawkeye’s wide-eyed stare and shook his head. He was sorry. He was truly, truly sorry for dragging her into that mess after she had tried to dissuade him. She had tried.

She kept her arms pinned to her sides while Grumman held her, and she opened her mouth, but no sound came.

“My Elizabeth,” Grumman said. “You’ve come home.”

Mustang’s throat tightened painfully, and he struggled to swallow because he had done what he had set out to do. He had arrived at the truth. The Führer was indeed ill, and, like a proper alchemist, Mustang arrived at the understanding of that illness by weighing the evidence presented.

The lack of clarity from Vogel, Grumman forgetting their years of chess matches...And the Führer himself had provided the most valuable piece of evidence. Elizabeth was not Hawkeye’s name.

It was her mother’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, look. I can explain. Chinese New Year. In Japan during initial virus outbreak. Job: Don’t come back, we’re shutting down. Crashlanding on Boyfriend’s couch in DC. Job: introducing remote work. My money is in China. Is my cat alive? Writing. Flying back home. Cat’s alive. Bam! Quarantine! Ao3 is…officially blocked. VPNs down. Lethargy and jet lag. Quarantine ends! Job: Offices are open. Job: ABORT OFFICE WORK SOMEONE TESTED POSITIVE. VPNs back. #googleatemydoc. Frustrated rewrites. PASSOVER. Dissatisfied rewrites. Animal Crossing! Fuck it, I’m finishing this.
> 
> And that about brings us up to speed. I know that we’re all struggling right now, and I hope your lives are safe and far less chaotic than mine has been.
> 
> Another note before I go. Yes, I speak Mandarin. No, I did not use Mandarin in this chapter. Xing is a fictional country, so it deserves a fictional language. Please do not use this chapter as your Mandarin 101 lesson. 
> 
> If you’ve stumbled upon this because you’re social distancing and bored, thanks for reading all the way to chapter 10. If you’re a returning reader, thanks for sticking with me through all...this. As always, your comments are deeply appreciated.


	11. Chapter 11

Mustang stopped counting the hours they had sat in Vogel’s office when an aide stepped in and asked if they wanted anything for lunch. Then came sandwiches, then tea and even smaller sandwiches.

Hawkeye did not eat. She did not speak. He did not press her to do either.

Mustang paced the blue border on the rug, around and around and around, measuring his pace and hoping his heart would slow with his steps. He dropped into one of the two chairs facing Vogel’s wide desk. Hawkeye sat still in the other and said nothing. She stared at a spot on one of the velvet curtains.

His fingers twitched, so he rose and paced again.

Finally, Vogel entered. Someone must have told him everything before his arrival, because he did not ask why they were there, did not confirm what they had seen, did not even offer pleasantries. He dropped an overstuffed folder on his desk, walked to the front, and leaned back against the edge and folded his arms. “The diagnosis came four months ago,” he said.

Mustang sat and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

“It was little things at first,” Vogel continued. “He’d forget files, keys…” He shrugged and repeated, “Little things.”

Mustang’s chest tightened, and he took a deep breath.

“Then he started forgetting meetings he had been to, the occasional name, even faces. So we called the doctor.” Vogel looked up at the ceiling and let silence hang before he said, as if speaking hurt his throat, “He has a year. Maybe two.”

Mustang’s breath caught painfully, and he looked at his laced fingers. “How have you…” He looked up at Vogel. “How have you been maintaining this?” Someone should have found out, someone should have noticed, especially since the Führer was surrounded by staff every day.

Vogel sniffed and nodded. “On his good days he’s active enough, and on bad days we still take him for a walk through the building so it looks like business as normal.” He inhaled. “And on his worst days…” He gripped the edge of the desk behind him. “Worst days are what you saw. He doesn’t know where or when he is.”

Mustang looked at Hawkeye, who had been as shocked as he had been by Grumman’s behaviour. She had folded her hands in her lap, but otherwise, she had not moved.

“He’s still having more good days than bad days,” Vogel said. “But it’s progressing quickly.”

Mustang looked down at the swirling pattern in the rug. Underneath the pains in his chest and the oncoming headache, he realised that if Grumman’s condition were worsening, the country would be without its rightful leader. “The people need to know—”

“I can’t let that happen,” Vogel said.

Mustang snapped his eyes up. “They have to know their leader isn’t capable—”

“If word gets out,” Vogel said, his voice louder and sharper than Mustang’s own, “Parliament will vote for a lack of confidence.” He smacked his hand against the surface of his desk. “They’ll put one of their own in here, and then you can forget about becoming Führer.”

Mustang straightened and bristled. He did not think Vogel was threatening him, but he knew no other way to interpret his statement. “What?” Even in the event of a Parliamentary special election, the popular election would still happen. He could still win.

Vogel sighed. “You know the popular election goes to Parliament if less than half of the country shows up?”

“Of course,” Mustang said. It was a piece of legislation that Charlie loved to cite. He said they not only had to get as many pro-Mustang voters to show up as they could, they had to get as many other voters to show up as they could. Richard Kaufman could put in minimal effort and still win.

“It was a concession,” Vogel said.

Mustang furrowed his brow.

Vogel nodded. “Parliament wanted to pick the next Führer, now that the fixed seats are gone and it would have been a real vote. And they would have picked one of theirs.”

Mustang looked back at the floor. Parliament had always had a number of seats filled by military-appointed members, and it had always been a number just high enough to ensure that the military power had the plurality of the vote. Parliament had also always picked the Führer, so it made sense that they wanted that to continue after full democracy guaranteed that the Führer would not be a military favourite.

“But the Führer thought—thinks,” Vogel corrected, “you can win. And he wants you to.”

Mustang swallowed the hardness in his throat.

“And that was the concession he made,” Vogel continued. “If the popular election fails, if the populace doesn’t care enough, Parliament gets what they want.” He drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. “And if they hold a special election before then and make one of their own the Führer, then we don’t even get to try.” He pushed himself off the desk and stepped toward Mustang. “It is my job to preserve the Führer’s legacy. The process of a popular election could be that legacy. But if you won’t keep this quiet for him, at least do it for yourself.”

Mustang glared at Vogel. He would never move against Grumman, and he resented the implication that he would. His interest was the people’s right to knowledge. Still, Vogel was right. The election might hang on that knowledge. He reminded himself of something he had figured out long ago: sometimes, to do the most good, one had to do a little evil first. So he would lie.

He nodded and heaved a sigh. He looked at Hawkeye. Her knuckles were white where she squeezed her hands together, but still she had not moved.

Whatever he was feeling, he could not imagine what went through her mind. Her own grandfather mistook her for her mother, which must have shocked her, as she had not said anything since. And there he and Vogel sat, discussing the politics of the man’s death as if it affected only them.

Yet hadn’t she, on multiple occasions, claimed that she did not really know Grumman? For years she had been uncomfortable with the idea of a familial relationship. She responded to Grumman’s inquiries about her health through Mustang with polite resignation. She declined overtures, rejected suggestions that she contact her grandfather Mustang’s blood heated when he thought that she might feel anything.

And his gut turned, because he knew it was an unfair way to think.

He looked back to Vogel and asked, “Who else knows?”

Vogel tapped the side of his leg. “Evelyn Bradley,” he began.

Mustang raised his eyebrows. The late Führer Bradley’s wife had known before he had.

“They’re friends,” Vogel explained. “And she was actually one of the first to notice.” He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “Four essential staff members, the doctor, two nurses, and now you two.”

Mustang glanced at Hawkeye again. She was nearly stone, but he could detect the uneven rise and fall of her chest, the flutter of her eyelashes, the way she sucked in and bit the insides of her cheeks. He turned his attention to the design on the carpet. 

Something Vogel said burned in his chest. If Parliament got one of their own into the Führer’s seat, there wouldn’t be a general election. Then, if Kaufman were elected the following year, even by the people, he might still dispense with the general election. That meant that there wouldn’t be any trying again in five years, not when the upcoming election could be the first and only in the country’s history. 

If Mustang didn’t get elected Führer, he never would be.

There were several concentric circles forming a sort of rose pattern in the carpet, but to him they looked more like an eye. The dark and twisting vines were black tendrils reaching and pulling at him. He was falling into an endless white void where time ceased and a man’s insignificance was cast in stark relief.

“There’s a granddaughter,” Vogel said.

He felt, rather than saw, Hawkeye’s head snap toward Vogel, and he heard a tiny sound—somewhere between a gasp and a groan—escape her.

“I’ve overheard him mention her once,” Vogel said, unaffected by the sudden life in the Major. He nodded at Mustang. “It was to you, I believe. We’re trying to find her, but we’ve hit some obstacles.”

He looked at Hawkeye, and she looked back, her eyes pleading with him. He jerked his head toward Vogel and furrowed his brow. If there ever was a time to reveal that secret and establish a connection with Grumman, they were living in it.

She hardened and set her shoulders back. It wasn’t his place to tell her what to do in family matters, and it wasn’t his place to speak for her either.

His skin heated and the back of his neck tightened. He was going to respond, but she looked away from him. 

He squeezed the arms on his chair because he wanted to reach across the gap between them and grab her arm instead. He wanted to tell her they were looking for her because her grandfather was ill and dying, and they wanted to bring him some comfort in his last days. He wanted to tell her that she should just announce who she was, that Grumman deserved a relationship with his last living relative.

Then again, Vogel must have already known. With Hawkeye’s clearance, he must have wondered who she was to Grumman, and he must have figured it out. Unless, of course, Grumman had taken measures to hide the connection, although he never had before…So Mustang looked away from her and asked, “Obstacles?”

Vogel walked around to the other side of his desk and dropped into his high-backed chair. “On his bad days, he doesn’t remember where she is or that she exists. And on good days he’s too lucid to tell me. Acts like it’s some great, fun mystery.” He steepled his fingers. “From what I can gather, his daughter eloped sometime after the 1885 census, because that’s the last time we can place her in East City, and that’s all I can get out of him.” He held up his hands in exasperation. “They cut each other off, she must have had a baby at some point, and then she died. And we don’t—”

The office door swung open, and an aide began to speak but stopped when she saw Mustang and Hawkeye sitting in the room. “I should have knocked,” she said.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Vogel grunted and said, “Excuse me,” and he rose and went to the door.

While Vogel spoke to the aide in low tones, Mustang turned to Hawkeye. He wondered what Vogel would do if he knew that Grumman’s granddaughter was in front of him.

He knew how much comfort she could bring Grumman, and he knew how badly Grumman wanted to see her, for he did nothing without reason. No one else could have granted Hawkeye the level of clearance she had. Grumman had opened his door as wide as he could for her, and he waited and hoped.

Mustang loved them both, and he wanted to tell her to put things aside for both of their sakes. If she waited, it might be too late, and she would carry the regret forever.

But at that moment, her breathing was quick and shallow, and she was pale like she might be sick. He had a terrible habit of offering unwelcome opinions on the subject, and he had already done that once, so instead of giving voice to his thoughts he said, “Are you alright?”

She jumped in her seat. “I need—” She pressed a hand to her chest and stood, and she said without looking at him, “May I step outside, Sir? I just need some air.”

He stood as well and took a step toward her. She looked into his eyes and then dropped her head. His shoulders tightened and he whispered, “Do you want me to join you?”

“No”, she said, and then she shook her head. “No, Sir. I’m just going for a walk. I’ll be back soon.”

He knew her, and he knew she would only harden her resolve the more he pressed her to speak to him or to Grumman. She did look ill, and a walk might do her good. So he nodded.

She left, slipping between Vogel and the aide with a soft word. Neither of them tried to stop her.

Mustang sank back into his chair and rubbed his left shoulder. There was a knot in his muscles that had formed five years earlier, and he had never been able to work it out. He doubted it would be loosening soon.

Vogel closed the door and walked back to his desk. “Anyway, we don’t have copies of the marriage or death certificates, because a huge portion of our Eastern duplicate records were lost in the Third Library fire.”

Mustang nodded. Then he stopped, because he remembered that girl, the one the Elrics had found and Hughes had hired, the one with the eidetic memory. She had been recreating those lost books and records. Then again, the list of works she had been rewriting from memory was long, and the government’s priority would have been to have her recreate census books and other logs. No one would have asked her to reproduce notarized documents such as birth, marriage, and death certificates. No one would have authorized her to do that.

“And he managed to purge Eastern Headquarters of those copies,” Vogel continued.

Mustang knew, of course, that Eastern Headquarters had a birth certificate on file. However, it would have been filed under Hawkeye’s name, and Vogel had no reason to look there.

“The originals would be in the land district office, so now we’re just trying to figure out which of the two thousand land districts that is.”

That girl who was recreating the archives would know. Even if she could not reproduce the certificates themselves due to bureaucracy, she could at least recall the information. But Vogel had not considered her an option, and Mustang thought it a betrayal of Hawkeye’s trust to suggest it, so he said, “That’s unfortunate.”

Vogel crossed his arms and studied Mustang with a calculating frown. “He hasn’t told you anything?”

Mustang reached for a lie. Hawkeye had her reasons for not saying anything, even if he didn’t understand them, and he couldn’t bear thinking about what she would do if he betrayed her trust. But he then saw how Vogel looked with narrowed eyes at the chair Hawkeye had been in. Of course, Vogel would have had questions about her. Very few people would have her level of clearance, and even if Vogel had no written evidence, he had to suspect. Still, Mustang would not satisfy him with an honest answer. “He’s been sparing with the details.”

Vogel grunted and shook his head to show he was not convinced. However, he then offered to have someone take Mustang to see the Führer again, though the nurse and one security agent would accompany him. Mustang accepted.

His chest ached as he followed the escort upstairs. He thought that, even if Grumman did not know him, one or two games of chess would be enough for him that day.

* * *

Alphonse watched Mei pick up a flat rock, brush her thumb over the surface, and sling it toward the centre of the pond. It skipped three times before sinking below the water and settling on, he imagined, a small mountain of similar stones. Ten stones for each hour they had spent by the pond, at least.

When they had arrived that morning, the sky had been grey-blue. In the stillness of evening, the sun hung low on the horizon, setting the sky aflame with bright oranges and pinks. 

Alphonse was hungry. His limbs ached from being in one place and one attitude for so long. Most of all, he was desperate for Mei to say more.

She had told him very little, more about the family dramas that had contributed to their downfall in Xing and less about her own emotional state. He would wait until she was ready, even if that meant skipping dinner and a bed and breakfast. His stomach rumbled, and he crossed his arms over it and watched Mei to see if she had heard.

Mei didn’t turn around. She examined another stone, then dropped it on the shore. A gentle breeze caressed her hair, long and unbound, and Mei sighed as the breeze stilled.

Alphonse stood and brushed dirt and grass from his pants.

“It’s like…” She still did not look at him, and she hugged herself tightly, but she was talking. She was talking. “I don’t want to smile anymore.”

Alphonse kept still, like she might run away if he moved.

She looked at him. “And I care about Edward and Winry. You know I do, but I can’t…” She looked away again and heaved a sigh. “It’s exhausting.”

He took a tentative step toward her. They had already discussed part of what had happened. The last Emperor had been her father, though he had been distant. The current Emperor was her half-brother, and he had made her an Imperial Minister. But someone had started a vile rumour about Mei and the Emperor, and the Chang clan elders had insisted that Mei had brought dishonour on all of them by being the unwilling subject of the gossip. And her clan, who should have valued familial loyalty above all else, cast her aside and refused to give her aid without a second thought. As if she hadn’t given her life serving the clan. As if she were nothing. She was angry, and he understood that. He couldn’t imagine how he would feel if Edward and Winry disowned him. “No one expects you to be fine.”

“No one wants what I’m really feeling, either,” she snapped.

Birds called to one another in the little copse across the water. “Which is?”

She shrugged and shook her head.

“Mei,” he said.

“Nothing.” She brushed her hair back from her face and hugged herself again. “Angry, sometimes, but mostly I’m just tired, and…” Her breath hitched. “And I feel…”

He reached for her shoulder and gently turned her to face him. A breeze pulled a strand of hair across her forehead, and he tucked it behind her ear.

“Hollowed out,” she said, and she ducked her head and hunched her shoulders as she did when she was embarrassed. “Or like I’m not really here. Or I am, but I’m not in my…” She gestured from her shoulders to her waist, and then she jerked back from him. “And I can’t talk to you, of all people, about that.”

Alphonse looked down at the ground. When they had first met, he had been, literally, a soul without a body. It was true that she had no idea what that could have felt like, but he likewise could not imagine her emotional hollowness.

“Duo xiao dou,” Mei said.

He looked up at her. “You’re not stupid.” 

She rubbed her bare arms. She still opted to wear Xingese silks—she had never owned anything else—although Winry had offered Amestrian clothing that would attract fewer stares and comments about exoticism in the town. Mei had refused, and Alphonse knew why. Taking that step would feel like divorcing herself from Xing entirely, and while her people had rejected her, she would never abandon her heritage and her homeland.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was responsible for her feeling anything other than happy.

She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”

He knew she was wrong. “I—”

“It’s not,” she said, and her shoulders heaved. “It’s mine.”

Alphonse forgot to breathe, and he turned that sentence over and over in his mind. “But—”

“I keep thinking about that first conversation with my uncle,” she said.

Alphonse nodded because he remembered her coming home in tears and not speaking to him about it for three days. As Mei’s maternal uncle, Chang Yong Zhen had positioned himself as the head of the clan and pushed his own daughter, Yi Xuan, into the Imperial Court as one of the Emperor’s wives. 

“And I think about it,” Mei continued, “and think about it.” She dug the heel of her hands into her temples. “And I think about what I should have done differently before everything happened. I should have spoken to Yi Xuan myself. I should have told you what was going on and not waited two months. I should—”

“Wait,” he said, and gravity seemed to shift with what she had just said. “What do you mean by ’two months’?”

Mei raised a hand to hide her quivering chin. “I knew,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Long before you did. But Ling said it would blow over, and I’m so sorry, and I’ll never keep anything from you again. Alphonse, I’m so sorry.”

A sharp pain pierced his chest, and he stared at the ground. He had been the last to know. He had been able to do nothing because his wife and his friend had apparently been keeping secrets from him for months.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain vanished and left an emptiness behind. His throat tightened and he swallowed. There was no point in getting angry, after all. “It’s done,” he said.

Mei let out a small sob.

He looked at her, at her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clamped over her mouth. If he were honest with himself, he would have done the same. If Ling had told him it would go away in time, he would have listened, and nothing would be different in the present. He couldn’t blame her for that, at least.

But he would have told her. There would be plenty of time to discuss that later, though. What mattered then was that they had both been carrying more guilt than was reasonable, and they had both been carrying it alone.

Instead of yelling or storming off, as she probably expected he would do, he pulled her close and buried his face in her hair. “It’s done,” he repeated. “It’s not all on you either.”

For a few minutes, they stood there. He breathed in the smell of clean soap, but under it was the lingering perfume of cinnamon and anise from the incense that used to burn around the palace. The scent clung to her clothing, and he wondered if it brought her comfort or more pain.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered.

She nodded and wrapped her arms around him. “He promised he would protect me, that he would protect all of us.”

There was her answer. She had decided whom to blame. Alphonse would never admit it to Edward, but a small, white-hot part of him agreed. What was the purpose of all of Ling’s power if he didn’t use it?

“He should have done something before it was too late,” Mei said, and her breath hitched. “Before he had to sneak us out like…” She choked on another sob.

“I know,” he said before repeating in Xingese, “Zhe batian.”

She pulled back, wiped her eyes, and mumbled an apology. Then she wiped the front of his shirt and smiled, really smiled. “You’re all wet.”

That smile rushed into the emptiness left by his earlier anger, and he smiled back. “It’s fine.”

He did not know how long they stayed out, but before the sun touched the horizon, he was sitting again and she was leaning back against his chest. He had missed their tender moments of stillness. Before everything had changed, they had studied together in such moments, bending over books and scrolls and trading hypotheses. They might do so again.

A plan that had been forming in the back of his mind came to him, and he looked up at the darkening sky. “Do you want to try getting away?”

Mei reached behind her and touched his cheek. “This is away.”

“No,” he said. She had mentioned exhaustion at feigning happiness, and imagined it would be worse around people who were celebrating the birth of a new baby. “I mean somewhere where you have to act—”

She pulled away and turned to kneel and face him. “I don’t want you to think—”

“I don’t,” he said. He knew she loved Edward and Winry, but he could also understand if she wanted distance to mourn the loss of her previous life. And that half-formed plan, the one that had first come to him during the town hall, pulled at him. “We could travel. You’ve never really seen Amestris.”

She frowned and cocked her head to one side. “I’ve been all over Amestris.”

“Not as a tourist!” When she had first arrived, so many years ago, she had played fugitive. She had travelled with fugitives, searching for a Philosopher’s Stone and never taking the time to stop and appreciate the world around her. He had done the same while Edward had been a State Alchemist. “And neither have I, really.” 

Mei nodded.

He rested his elbows on his knees and took her hands in his own. “We could go to Ishval.” He had never been, and she had friends who lived there. “We could see Doctor Marcoh and—”

“I don’t want to see them.” She looked at their hands and shook her head. “I don’t want to see anyone who will have questions.”

Alphonse understood that. He didn’t even want to discuss things with his own brother.

Thinking of Edward reminded him of his plan, the one he was only a little afraid to speak out loud, the one that might save them all.

He took a deep breath. “We could go to Central.” His ears heated, and he released one of her hands so he could rub the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking we should go for a few days.” He shrugged. “There’s something I want to do, but I don’t know if it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

Alphonse looked up at the sky and thought about how to begin. It had started with an offhand comment from his brother, and then Alphonse had overheard Edward’s side of a telephone conversation. He had turned the idea over in his head, dismissed it, then considered it more.

He explained the steps he would have to take and what it would mean for them in the future. Edward could not know until it was done, and Alphonse emphasized that multiple times.

It was their best solution. They would be able to help Edward and Winry financially, and Alphonse might be able to gain back some of the respect he had squandered as an interim ambassador. This he added at the end with a sheepish glance at Mei, and he hoped she didn’t think him selfish for thinking of his success first.

She pursed her lips and nodded slowly. Then she said, “I think it’s a perfect idea.” She tapped her index finger against her chin. “We could leave the aeroplane here and let Winry take it apart and put it back together all she wants.”

His chest swelled and he smiled. There were still things to discuss, communication being one of them, but they were still together. She was coming with him. They would be fine. She was brilliant and beautiful and he loved her, so he said, “Zhe mei yi.”

She leaned forward and held his face in her hands, and she kissed him for the first time in weeks.

It felt like sunlight bursting in his chest and filling him from his toes to his head.

When she pulled away, she whispered, “Zhe ta mei yi.”

He pulled her into his arms and revelled in the closeness, and he would do so until they returned to the house.

* * *

It was not cold—in fact, it was warm—but Riza pulled her uniform jacket tighter as she walked. She did not know the neighbourhood she had wandered into, but it was quiet and lovely and a good place to collect her thoughts, and for that at least she was grateful.

A few people stared at her as she passed, and she wished she was less conspicuous. She felt the ribbons at her breast burning into her skin with each glance. The General had been asked to wear his formal uniform to the residence, and she had dressed to match. 

Her stomach tightened when she thought about how she had left the General alone in Vogel’s office, but she was confident he would be fine on his own.

The Führer, though, was less than fine, and that thought did not bother her at all. 

She should have felt sad, perhaps a sudden desire for kinship. Instead, she had felt nothing. She had accepted the Führer's illness as mere fact, a tragic one, but a distant one. It was a misfortune that had befallen a stranger. Then Vogel had unintentionally reminded her that she was meant to have a personal stake in the Führer’s well-being, but she felt no responsibility or pain. She had been more distraught over the death of her dog than she was over the deterioration of her grandfather’s mind. In fact, she was more upset by the run in the foot of her nylons, acquired during the mad dash through the residence, than she was by anything Vogel had said.

And that made her sick, like something sticky roiled in her gut and threatened to claw its way out. It was not how she was supposed to feel.

She shrugged out of her jacket and draped it over her arm, taking care to hide the decorations. In her dark blue skirt and plain nylons and white button-down blouse—required for formal dress—she looked like any working woman on her way home for lunch. She certainly attracted fewer stares.

And if she just walked a little farther, she could leave her self-disgust behind.

Riza took a deep breath and looked at the houses on either side of the pedestrian street. Black iron gates and white stone facades and carved lintels surrounded her. One front garden caught her attention, and she moved toward it.

Every garden on the block was trim and simple, but this one had a careful wildness about it. A melange of flowers she could not name spilled from pots and flooded the sides of the short footpath leading to the front door of the row house. Ivy climbed the white brick walls and a small bench and birdbath sat just beneath a trellis supporting light purple blooms.

Someone loved that garden, and she thought that one day, when she had settled into one place long enough and had the time to devote, she might love one like it. She would learn to make things grow and become beautiful, and then, on a quiet pedestrian street where only low conversations and children’s laughter broke the silence, she might enjoy life in Central.

She had lived in East City for fifteen years, and in her current apartment for three, and she had made no overtures to a permanent project.

Riza closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh sweetness that floated on the wind.

She could start, though. After the General had won the election and moved to Central, she could find a small house in a peaceful area and create something. Or, she dared to think, she could tend a little garden at the residence. Mrs Bradley had kept flowers, but Riza doubted that maintenance of the garden was a priority for Vogel, especially in recent days.

Something tapped against her heel, and she looked down to see a leather sports ball the size of an orange. She knelt and picked it up, her thoughts back at the residence again. She traced the lacing on the surface of the ball and thought she should head back. The General might need her.

Then she looked up and saw the boy.

He was unmistakable with his black hair, dark eyes, and dishevelled shirt and grass-stained trousers.

She had last seen him in a worse state, eight years earlier, when the stress of continuing his existence had resulted in the deconstruction of his own body. Yet when she remembered him, it was as she saw him in that street, in front of that garden. He looked the same age, with the same sweet expression, as if he were still play-acting at being a normal boy who would never pursue her through the colonnade at the Führer’s residence and bind her with shadowy tendrils that whispered over her skin and gripped tighter than they should have.

Her heartbeat thrashed in her ears, and every muscle in her body froze while her mind begged her to run.

Selim Bradley looked at her shaking hands and then at her face, and he said, “Are you still afraid of me?”

All air fled her body, and an overwhelming nausea took its place. “What?”

He blinked, and then he said with a great deal of patience, “May I have my ball back, Miss?”

She looked down at the ball in her hands. “Oh.” She must have misheard him. She was tired, she was shocked, she was wracked with conflicting emotions. Of course, she had misheard him. “Yes.”

As she passed the ball to him, she heard Mrs Bradley call, “Selim!”

Riza brushed her hands on her skirt. She should have known Mrs Bradley would be close behind, and she saw the older woman walking quickly down the street. A young couple moved to the side to give her a wide berth, and Riza felt a lump form in her throat.

People thought Mrs Bradley was mad. She had been a popular topic in gossip columns in the months following the Promised Day, and it was not unusual for her name to appear in small articles years later. Riza remembered one headline: “Evelyn Bradley Has Lost Her Husband, Her Son, and Her Mind.” She had even heard some school children skipping rope and singing “or else you’ll go mad, like poor old Eva Brad.”

For what else was the public to think? Ostensibly, Mrs Bradley’s husband and adopted son had perished in a horrific, failed coup, and not a few weeks had passed before Mrs Bradley was seen with another infant boy, one that was the exact image of her first son when he had been a baby. Then someone discovered that not only had she adopted a baby that was identical to her late eight-year-old son, but also she had called him by the same name: Selim. It was not the behaviour of a stable, sane woman.

The people didn't know that her first son had not been human, but instead an immortal homunculus created at the nation's inception. They didn’t know how Mrs Bradley had been deceived in her marriage. They didn't know that Selim had lost his immortality and reverted to infancy during the chaos of the General’s coup, that the two Selims were the same.

The people knew Mrs Bradley was a madwoman. They avoided and followed her with morbid fascination. And the woman had borne it as no other could have borne it, for in spite of what the people thought they knew, Mrs Bradley was quite sane.

Mrs Bradley slowed when she saw Riza, and she smiled. “Oh, Major Hawkeye.” She put one hand on Selim’s shoulder. “I had heard General Mustang was in town, but I didn’t think you’d be wandering around here.”

Riza tried to smile, but she couldn’t, not when that child was looking at her. “I’m just—” She cleared her throat. “I’m taking a walk.”

Mrs Bradley hummed and gestured to the garden and the house behind Riza. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

Riza turned to the garden and looked back at Mrs Bradley. “You…” Her ears warmed, and she took a deep breath. How foolish she must look, frozen outside of Mrs Bradley’s home. “No, thank you,” she said. “I should be getting back to the residence.”

Back to the residence, where she had left the General. Back to the residence, where there waited the reminder of her lack of empathy. The General had seen it—she hadn’t been able to bear looking at the disapproval in his eyes. He must have been as disgusted with her as she was.

Her distress was clearly evident because Mrs Bradley nodded. “Oh, I see,” she said, and Riza remembered that Vogel had mentioned Mrs Bradley had been one of the first to know about the Führer’ health.

Mrs Bradley reached forward and said, “Major Hawkeye—”

“Mom,” groaned Selim as he tugged on her blouse sleeve.

“Alright,” Mrs Bradley told him, then, abandoning whatever she had meant to say, she smiled at Riza. “Good day, Major Hawkeye. Selim, tell Major Hawkeye ‘goodbye.’”

Selim looked at her with the resignation of a child forced to endure strangers and said, “Bye.”

“Goodbye,” Riza whispered.

Then mother and son pushed open the wrought iron gate and left her in the street.

Riza turned to her left. She knew she had turned onto the street just a few houses away, but beyond that, she was unsure of her whereabouts. She did not know how many streets she had turned onto or how many blocks she had walked down. She closed her eyes and sighed. It had been a long time since she had let her emotions overwhelm her, but she always got sloppy when she did.

She turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”

Mrs Bradley stopped in the doorway of her home. Selim had already disappeared into the shadows inside, and the relief loosened Riza’s shoulders.

“Could you tell me how to get back?” she asked.

Mrs Bradley smiled and walked back to the gate. “Of course. If you go up—”

“Mom!”

Mrs Bradley turned to Selim, who had appeared on the doorstep. “Go practice your scales. I’ll be there soon.” She looked back at Riza with an apologetic smile. “He had an active day, and he’s starving.”

Riza forced a smile and nodded.

Mrs Bradley gestured back to the house. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll draw you a map.”

The darkness in the house yawned before them, but Riza nodded and told herself she was being ridiculous. Selim Bradley wasn’t a monster anymore. He was just a little boy.

Mrs Bradley led her inside and flipped a few light switches. She had a lovely parlour, decorated in a modern style with clean lines and shades of charcoal and dusty violet and orange. Selim sat on a black piano bench in front of an upright and watched them. Mrs Bradley excused herself into a small office while Riza waited.

Riza watched Selim watching her. He turned to the piano and hit a single key, then looked back at her. Then he hit another one, and then another.

“Here you are,” Mrs Bradley said, and Riza’s heart thudded. She held out a folded piece of stationery. “Are you sure you won’t stay?”

“I’m sure,” Riza said.

Selim slammed both hands on the keys, making a discordant blast that made Riza jump and Mrs Bradley put her hands on her hips.

“Selim!” Mrs Bradley said.

“I’m practising!” he cried. 

She pointed at him. “You’re not.” She shook her head at Riza in apology and opened the front door. She gestured to the street. “Turn left, then follow that.” She tapped the paper.

Riza unfolded it and looked at the map sketched in blue ink, at parallel lines indicating streets and arrows showing where to turn.

“You are always welcome, you know,” Mrs Bradley said, and she smiled when Riza looked up. “There. And here.”

Riza nodded. “Thank you.” The meaning of Mrs Bradley’s comment was not lost on her, and she realized that the woman knew far more about Riza and Grumman than she let on. It was kind of her to extend her own hospitality as well, so Riza said, “Your garden is lovely.”

“Oh.” Mrs Bradley smiled. “Thank you.”

Riza stepped onto the little path that led to the gate. “Goodbye.”

Mrs Bradley waved. “Goodbye.” She closed her door.

Riza walked through the gate and onto the street, but she stopped when she heard faint, uneven piano scales. She looked through the bay window where Selim sat at an upright piano. He must have noticed her watching, because he looked up, then toward the back of the house. After another moment, he looked at her again, waved, and smiled.

She turned away and rushed down the street, and when she reached the first corner she leaned her hand against a streetlamp and told herself she was being foolish. She was imagining things that weren’t there. It was unreasonable that, after so many years, seeing that child could spark so much fear.

She looked down at the paper Mrs Bradley had given her and followed the hastily-sketched lines, searching for street signs and landmarks until she reached the first intersection with a paved road for automobiles.

Following directions was methodical—grounding—and her breathing evened as she walked. She was almost composed when she reached the gatehouse at the residence.

The guard took her identification badge and sent her into the house with a reminder that he still had her holster and weapons. 

She had forgotten to take them when she had left. She was supposed to be better than that. She needed to be better than that.

An aide at the main door took her down a series of hallways and back into Vogel’s office.

The Minister to the Führer hovered over his desk and looked up when she entered. “He’s saying goodbye,” he told her before turning back to a stack of papers. “You can too.”

She tugged at her shirtsleeves and smoothed out her skirt, realizing too late that her walk might have left her dishevelled. “Thank you.”

“Are you an old family friend or something?” he asked with a sharpness that let her know he did not think she was just a friend.

Riza swallowed and dug her nails into her palms. “Or something.” 

Vogel grunted. Had the General told him?

Riza looked at the decorations in the room and searched for something that could keep him from prying further. She settled on the painting of an ocean over a bureau. It was an odd choice. Amestris was landlocked. She wondered if the General’s future Minister to the Führer would choose something different, perhaps a scene from the Amestrian countryside. She wondered who he would pick, and that thought unnerved her more than she had expected.

She turned to Vogel and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He looked up from his desk. “If it’s quick.”

She looked at the stacks of papers and folders and files on his desk. Some of them were meant to be the Führer’s, she assumed. There must be a line between the Führer’s work and his own. “What exactly is your job?”

Vogel rolled his shoulders back as he straightened. “That’s not quick at all.” He looked toward one of the windows. “Whatever he needs it to be, I guess. My job is to do everything in my power to make sure the Führer can do his own job.” He looked back at her and gave her the first smile she had ever seen on his face. “I imagine you're familiar with the concept.”

She was.

Riza remembered her first days working in Eastern Headquarters. She had been sent into combat early, before her graduation, and her wounds sustained in Ishval and her recovery period had prevented her from completing coursework with her class. That first year she had run from courses to the office almost every day. There had been sleepless nights of studying after staying late at work, minor breakdowns on the office floor as she searched for a specific case in Lieutenant Colonel Mustang’s circular and maddeningly subjective filing system, and many failures. The Lieutenant Colonel had been patient, but he had never lowered his expectations.

Fifteen years later, she had built a reputation in the military for precision and efficiency. She spent her days making his job easier. She kept track of his schedule, his workload, and the minutiae he could not take on. She knew how to anticipate his needs before he knew what they were. She understood that if he had to ask for something, or demand something be done, it was already too late.

She nodded. “That includes being him.” She had attended meetings in the General’s stead when there were conflicts.

“It takes a lot of loyalty and love,” Vogel said, and there was an intensity to his voice that told her they both knew where the conversation was headed. “There’s no glory in it. It is a thankless job.” He took a deep breath, and his fingers traced a line of text on a document before him. “The people of this country can never know everything I do. So, if you don’t mind giving everything you have and getting nothing in return…” He shrugged.

To Riza, his seemed a bleak interpretation of their duties. She recalled something Alphonse said often, something he and Edward tried to live. “You can always give back more than you get,” she said.

Vogel hummed. “Not really an option in this position.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I have to go, but if you want it…” He walked to the bureau and rifled through drawers until he pulled out a stapled packet. “Here,” he said, offering it to her. “It’s the legislation on the position.” His lips curled again, slightly. "But it's far from comprehensive."

Riza took it from him and flipped through the pages. It was a short read, one she could finish that night. She had never been ambitious, had never vied for her promotions or for positions of authority, but she knew that if the General left the military to finish what they had begun, she would follow.

“Read up if you’re interested,” Vogel said, and he went back to his desk and gathered up a few folders. Then he held open the office door and ushered her into the hall. “And if you want my advice, don’t be interested.”

Her escort still waited in the hall, and when Vogel had bid his farewell, the aide asked where Riza wanted to go.

Vogel had said she could visit the Führer, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything about him. Likewise, he did not know her. She didn't know what either of them could expect from a visit.

What she did want was to return to the hotel, order a pot of tea to her room, and fall asleep. She wanted to forget the turmoil inside her head and forget seeing Selim. She could not, however, leave without the General, and didn't know where to tell the aide to take her to wait for him.

In what might have been her first stroke of good fortune in weeks, she turned her head and saw the General coming toward her. She tucked the legislation under one arm and saluted him, and he released her.

“Are you ready?” he said.

She nodded once. “Yes, Sir.”

She knew that he wanted to speak with her, to ask her questions. She could see it in the set of his jaw and the incline of his head. He could not speak on anything with the escort leading them, and she was glad because she knew she would have no satisfactory reply.

They picked up their things at the guardhouse—her weapons and his gloves—and walked to the automobile.

Riza dug into her jacket pocket for the keys, but something like a string tugged at her mind, and she turned to look at the residence. A figure stood in the window on the top storey and watched them go, and her gut twisted and her hands shook, and she dropped the keys on the sidewalk.

She needed to stop looking back at windows, she told herself while she bent down.

The General picked up the keys first, and he opened the passenger door and jerked his chin toward it. She slid into the automobile without argument and waited while he climbed in on the driver's side and started the engine.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir.” It was the easiest response, and if she was honest, she did not know if she was alright or not. She was determined to be, and that was enough.

Whether he understood her or whether he believed her, she did not know, for he did not press. Instead, the General spent the drive back to the hotel making light comments that did not necessitate a response. They would be in Central for too long, and it was unnatural for a man to live out of a suitcase for a whole month. There were only six applicants for the State Alchemist Exams that week, and that was good, because he’d finish judging the practicals early. Speaking of the exams, he insisted she take the whole of Friday off, instead of just the afternoon. The last comment she did not understand, because she didn’t remember making the request or know why she would have made one in the first place, but her eyelids felt heavier with each passing block, and she couldn’t fight him then.

He must have known that, though, schemer that he was.

When they reached the hotel, he handed her out of the automobile and let go before she could register the contact. They crossed the marble floor of the lobby—only the best for a candidate, Charlie had insisted, and the military had also never put up a four-star general in anything less than a four-star establishment—and walked down the dark hall where their block of rooms were.

The General sighed. “I’m not very hungry. I’m going to bed.”

On any other day, she would argue that he needed to eat. She also could not bear the thought of food, and she too wanted sleep. “Yes, Sir.”

He pulled out his key and turned the lock. “Hawkeye.”

“Yes, Sir?”

He looked her in the eye and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

She knew what he meant. He was sorry for pushing her earlier, sorry for being angry when she hadn’t wanted to speak to Grumman like he had wanted. He was sorry for dragging her into another crazy plot. He was sorry for burdening her with another political secret, and he was sorry that the complications of her nonexistent relationship with her grandfather had multiplied. It was all too much for her just then, and her chest constricted so much she felt her ribs might break. “Yes, Sir,” she whispered back.

He waited for more, but she had nothing more to give him. So he nodded and opened his door. “Get some sleep.” Then he disappeared into his room.

Riza pressed a hand to her chest and closed her eyes. She inhaled slowly. “Yes, Sir,” she breathed into the darkness of the hall. She pulled out her own key and let herself into her dimly-lit room, but she froze when one of the shadows on the wall moved.

It moved again and again and again, and her heart hammered in her chest, and she realized that a maid had left a candle burning. The flickering light cast unnatural shadows all around.

She went to the bedside table and blew out the flame, and the room was dark except for the faint glow of street lamps coming through the window.

Riza pulled off her uniform and hung it in the provided wardrobe, then she slipped into her pyjamas and under the bed covers. 

Her heart still pounded, and although she was exhausted and although she squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the soft, white quilt up to her chin, sleep would not come. She turned onto her side, but the events of the day played behind her eyelids, as if she were sitting in a cinema and not lying in a hotel room.

In the darkness, she relived the horror of being mistaken for her mother by a man she did not know, and whom she had no particular desire to know. The self-disgust she felt when she realised her impassive detachment. The terror of seeing that boy again, like some recurring nightmare nearly a decade old. She clenched her jaw because she was annoyed, so annoyed, with herself for being frightened by something as simple as a candle.

She rolled onto her back again and threw one arm across her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to sleep and wake up and have a less terrible day, but her mind raced and her neck tightened with an anxiety she could not shake.

She sat upright. She would not be able to sleep, she knew, until she had managed to calm herself. Perhaps she could speak with the General. He would offer her an ear, if not complete understanding. Then she dismissed the idea. If he were already sleeping, she would not want to wake him.

She needed a drink. She could go down to the hotel lounge, order something just to help her calm down, and then she would be able to sleep.

Riza slid out of bed and dressed again in her blouse and a brown skirt, the nicest one she had brought. As she rolled her nylons on, she felt the run on the sole of her foot pull and spread up and over her ankle.

The purchasing of new nylons was an expense she had not anticipated, and she yanked them off, wadded them into a ball, and threw them into the waste bin. Then she sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. There was yet another frustration to add to her ever-growing list.

It would be dark in the lounge, she decided, and no one would notice if she weren’t wearing them, so she stepped into her shoes and left her room.

The lounge was dark and smoky, with rich woods and greens in the furniture. Several groups took after-dinner drinks in large armchairs, while others engaged in idle conversation at the long bar.

One gentleman at the bar towered above the other patrons. He bent over a file and raked a hand through his blond hair, and Riza was glad the seat next to him was open.

She slipped past a few seating areas and onto the stool.

Neumann almost jumped when he saw her, but he smiled and shoved the papers into a leather attaché. “Hey!” he said with more vigour than she had felt in days. “Hi. Can I get you a drink?”

“Please,” she said.

Neumann must have noticed her weariness, because he nodded and said, “We’ll make it a strong one, then.” Then he raised his hand to summon the bartender.

Riza watched him ask for a menu, and she rested her chin in one hand and wished, as she often had, that she had chosen a different life. That she had made different choices. It was a counterproductive wish, however. There was no undoing them. There was only moving forward.

So when Neumann passed the menu to her, she forced herself to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all. Life is returning to normal here, as evidenced by the return of certain ingredients to supermarkets, and I’m trying to get myself onto a normal upload schedule. So, see you in two-to-three weeks, provided some massive political nonsense doesn't occur and get my VPN knocked out.
> 
> All of you, stay safe. Wash your hands, don’t inject yourselves with bleach, stay inside if you can afford to, and wear a mask if you can get one. It’s not over here, and it’s not over for you either. Just stay inside and keep reading fanfiction, you funky introverts.aqw


	12. Chapter 12

Riza tugged her boot onto her foot and yanked the laces. The chaos of the past two days had enveloped her like a fog, the hours and minutes thick and ephemeral at the same time, and that had only broken when she had awoken that morning and realised she had not received a wake up call.

Every muscle in her shoulders tightened. The General would be on his way out of the hotel, and she would miss him because these silly, expensive hotel rooms didn’t have alarm clocks, because those were for the working class. No, in hotels like this, a maid or butler was supposed to wake a guest with the comforts of a hot towel and breakfast in bed, or, if someone had an early start, with a telephone call to the room. Somehow, they had overlooked her.

Not somehow. The General had been insisting for days that she take the morning off while he oversaw the State Alchemist exams. He must have overridden her request to the front desk. No one else had the temerity to—

A rapid knock sounded at the door as Riza shrugged on her uniform jacket, so she opened the door and a tall woman who smelled of oranges and cinnamon pulled her into a tight embrace.

When she had caught her breath, Riza said, “Rebecca?”

Rebecca pulled back and held Riza by the shoulders. She looked her up and down and frowned at the blue military uniform. “What are you wearing?” she said. “Put on something normal.” Then she pushed past Riza and into the room and threw open the wardrobe.

Riza turned to watch Rebecca pull out various garments and hang them up again. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday,” Rebecca said. “Where else would I be?” She put her hands on her hips. “Did you bring anything that wasn’t brown, black, or white? Oh, never mind.” She pulled out a cardigan and held it up. “This is grey.”

It was her birthday. In the chaos of the last few days, Riza had completely forgotten. Besides, birthdays seemed to matter less the older she grew. There were always more important things. “I have to work.”

“No, you don’t,” Rebecca said, and she shut the wardrobe and popped open Riza’s suitcase. “Mustang just told me you have the whole day off.”

He had threatened her with time off, but she was meant to take that time later, after they had left Central. “I told him—”

“You lost,” Rebecca said, and she examined the only other pair of shoes Riza had brought—a pair of black heels. “He’s already gone.” She shrugged and grabbed Riza’s arm with her free hand. “Come on. I’ve got the whole day planned, and I didn’t pencil in time for you to stand here looking x .”

Rebecca pulled her out of the room before Riza had time to ask where they were going or change out of her uniform. They travelled down the hallway and onto a lift where Rebecca directed the attendant to one of the higher floors where the more expensive suites were located.

There were many competing thoughts in Riza’s mind. How could the General go so far, leaving her behind when she had insisted she had not wanted to be left? Had he thought she needed it after the events of several days earlier? Had she been a callous person for not wanting to have the Führer in her life, in spite of his condition? Did Rebecca know about his condition? Why had Rebecca, who had never been a particularly wasteful person--extravagant, maybe, but not wasteful--come so far and booked a suite in a fine hotel instead of staying in Leo’s flat?

She took a breath, ready to ask the last question, but Rebecca gasped and said, “We forgot your nylons.”

Riza blinked as the elevator stopped and the attendant opened the gate. She hadn’t considered her nylons in days. “I threw them out.”

Rebecca hummed and pulled Riza into the hallway. “You can have a pair of mine.” She unlocked a dark wood door, led Riza into a cream and gold sitting area, and disappeared into an arch leading to a connected bedroom. “I checked in this morning,” she called behind her.

Riza nodded and followed Rebecca into the bedroom, but she paused when she saw three suitcases stacked on a padded bench. No one brought three suitcases for a weekend away. “Rebecca,” she said.

Rebecca ducked out of her own wardrobe with a mauve dress draped over her arms. “Try this one.”

“Rebecca,” Riza repeated with more sternness.

Rebecca rolled her eyes and held the dress up to Riza’s collarbone, then she smiled. “You’ll look amazing.”

Riza sighed. She would have to wait until Rebecca was more willing to let her control the conversation. In the meantime, she would submit to Rebecca’s pampering. She let Rebecca button her into the dress, fuss over earrings and necklaces, and plop her down at a vanity to twist and pin her hair into an elaborate bun. Rebecca chatted the whole time.

“I was thinking we could get breakfast at this café I know by the river,” Rebecca said. “They have the best crumb cake in the city.”

Riza nodded. She didn’t have enough knowledge of Central cafés to compare crumb cakes—she had lived in Central for only a few months, and nearly a decade had passed since then. Rebecca had spent several years in Central, working as Führer Grumman’s personal aide until her marriage had pulled her into the South.

She looked at Rebecca, combing and rearranging Riza’s hair, in the mirror. Did she know about the Führer? Had Vogel decided she was allowed to?

“Then we can walk to the fair.” Rebecca dropped her hands on Riza’s shoulders and smiled at her work. “I’ve heard it will be open through October this year—the madness of it! But we can ride the wheel, gorge ourselves on different sweets—” She stopped herself when she saw Riza’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Riza wondered if she could say. Rebecca had known the Führer for years, was closer to him than Riza had ever been or ever wanted to be. And she didn’t want to be, and she clenched her fists when she thought that Führer Grumman expected that she would want to be. He had made no efforts to contact her when she had been a child in Amlingstadt—though he would have known where she was and he would have known when her father had died. He had kept his distance during her adulthood, had let certain suspicions fall on her and the General in the aftermath of the coup to secure his own hold on power. How dare he grant her such a level of clearance—as if he were waiting for her to walk through his door, with a smile and a ready embrace, simply because he had opened it!

“Riza?”

She looked up at Rebecca. Perhaps she was being selfish. The Führer was ill, and he needed people around him who cared about him. 

That wouldn’t be her, though.

She did not know what Vogel would say if she were to tell Rebecca. She didn’t care. She knew Rebecca to be trustworthy, so she told her.

She started with the General’s frustrations regarding the Führer’s prolonged absences and finished with the tumultuous day in the residence.

By the end of the story, they were both sprawled on the coverlet. Riza traced patterns in the embossed velvet, and Rebecca ran her fingers through her bobbed hair.

“Poor man,” Rebecca said after several minutes of silence. “I’ll have to see him while I’m here.”

Riza looked over at the three stacked suitcases. She was certain then that Rebecca intended to stay beyond the weekend.

“He’s such a dear,” Rebecca sighed.

Riza snapped her head back to stare at Rebecca, because of all the adjectives she had ever heard Rebecca use about the Führer, that was not one of them. “You used to get furious with him when he smacked your ass.”

Rebecca held up a finger. “I don’t think—”

“You called it ‘harassment,’” Riza said. She remembered every complaint about it, always delivered to Riza over lunches and coffees but never officially filed. Though, given Grumman’s influence and authority, Riza doubted anything would have come of a formal complaint.

Rebecca pushed herself to lean against the mountain of pillows against the padded headboard. “It was harmless.”

Riza’s position of higher authority meant that she had rarely been the recipient of unwanted sexual attention in the office, at least not from the men in their little unit. Never from the General. She was lucky, but she was not stupid. She was a woman in the military. “Was it?”

Rebecca rolled over and grabbed the telephone off the bedside table. “Forget everything I had planned. Let’s order something to eat.” She dialled and read off items from the room service menu, and then she hung up and fell back against the pillows.

Riza glanced at the full wardrobe and stacked suitcases. It was time to return to her earlier question. “Rebecca.”

Rebecca hummed.

“You brought three suitcases.” She looked back at her friend, who sat upright and fidgeted with a ribbon on her blouse.

After a long silence, Rebecca said, “Leo’s scheduled a meeting with an automobile manufacturer.” She shrugged, but the gesture was stiff and mechanical. “He’ll be here on Tuesday, and we’ll talk then.” She gave Riza a tight smile. “Try to compromise.”

Riza’s stomach sank, and she reached across the coverlet and took Rebecca’s hand. It seemed to her that it wasn’t an issue that allowed compromise. One either had children, or one didn’t. There would not be a resolution that left both Rebecca and Leo happy. Before she could say as much, Rebecca waved her free hand.

“I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s talk about you.” Rebecca scooted forward and squeezed Riza’s fingers. “How’s Killjoy Mustang?”

Riza glared, but Rebecca pretended to not see. So she looked at the ceiling and considered. She had already told Rebecca about the Führer, and she knew Breda and Fuery were gone. Then there was Alphonse Elric’s inopportune return from Xing, the death of Black Hayate, the Amestrian Freedom Army...And the General. Always, everything came back to the General.

She recalled the conversation between the General and herself on the train, and she decided that out of everything, that was the thing on which she most wanted Rebecca’s opinion. “He brought up a promotion to lieutenant colonel the other day.”

“Hey!” Rebecca beamed at her.

Riza shook her head. “I don’t know if I want it,” she said, and she let out a breath and let her shoulders drop.

Rebecca was less enthused by the admission. “Why not?” She slid to sit next to Riza, their feet dangling over the side of the bed. She nudged Riza with her shoulder. “You’d be a lieutenant colonel at thirty-four, which is practically unheard of—”

“Thirty-five,” Riza said. The General had made lieutenant colonel by twenty-five, but he was a unique case. She looked at Rebecca and explained, “It might not go into effect until next year.”

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “And you’re upset about the wait?”

Riza lay down and stared at the paper mâché ceiling medallion. That was hardly the reason, but all her real reasons crammed together in her head. “It’s so close to the election,” she said. 

The General would become the Führer, and she would either serve as adjutant under his replacement, which was less than ideal, or she would have to take her own office and her own command, which she found almost more distasteful. If she stayed in the military while he continued to dismantle the stratocracy, she would be of less and less use to him, or, at least, she would not be useful in the capacity she was at that moment. She was supposed to be his protector, his conscience—whatever he needed her to be—at all times, not only when his duties as Führer would overlap with hers as an officer.

No, there was only one way forward for her. There always had been.

“I was talking to Vogel,” she began, and then she stopped because bringing up the position of Minister to the Führer suddenly seemed silly, grandiose. She felt like a schoolgirl announcing she was going to be a great painter before growing up and realising she had no eye for colour or line.

“Oh?” Rebecca said. She lay down next to Riza.

Riza had read the legislation Vogel had given her. It was dense, and he had said that there was more to his job than was included. She had spent so many years preparing the General for his role as Führer, and she wasn’t sure how to prepare herself.

“Oh,” Rebecca said again. Then she jerked upright. “Oh!” She grabbed Riza’s arm and shook. “Oh, Riza, you’d be so good at it!”

Riza’s stomach twisted. “There’s so much more to it than I anticipated,” she whispered.

“So?” Rebecca rubbed her hands together. “I remember from when I was Grumman’s aide. It’s basically what you do now, but more of it. And bigger.”

Yes, more and bigger. The idea of taking on more responsibilities that would play a direct role in the entire country’s governance was a daunting one. Even when she had served under Führer Bradley as his aide she had been removed from politics, both by the nature of the former government structure and by the unique nature of her position at the time. She wasn’t afraid, but it set her head spinning.

Rebecca balled a fist under her chin. “You’d have to acquaint yourself with Parliament, of course. What they do and how they do it.”

Riza eased upright and nodded. She would be in Central for a few more weeks, and they would return to the city for debates and other events. She would have time to observe Parliament sessions, and Rebecca had worked with a Minister to the Führer during the first years of Parliament's acquisition of legislative power. She knew what it would require, and she could help Riza prepare.

“Vogel was the one who handled all meetings between Grumman and different Parliament members,” Rebecca continued. “I remember people would say that one can always tell that things are bad when the Führer himself shows up to the Parliament building.” She counted on her fingers as she said, “And there was a lot of agenda pushing, and of course managing the ministers, running the staff—” She stopped and looked at Riza with a frown. “I’m not putting you off, am I?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.” She felt calm soothing her chest, soothing her stomach, soothing her perpetually-tense muscles. It sounded so right coming from Rebecca. Riza had been right to voice her thoughts.

Rebecca grabbed Riza’s knee. “Oh! Mustang’s single, so he’ll need somebody to act as First Lady.” She waved her hand with each new responsibility. “Plan events, entertain foreign heads of state, organise charities, maintain some sort of socially-bent passion project...” She smiled. “You know, that sort of thing.”

Riza nodded. Rebecca was not the first to suggest that the General would require a First Lady, though she was the first to imply that he wouldn’t have to be married to the woman.

Rebecca tilted her head. “Mrs Bradley was doing it for a while.” She shook her head. “I don’t think anyone has taken over since she stepped back.” She nudged Riza with her elbow. “And you won’t be able to if you’re Minister to the Führer.”

And though Rebecca was not stupid and had not been stupid for fifteen years, Riza said, “I wouldn’t be First Lady anyway.”

Rebecca pressed a hand to her chest. “I’m talking about me! I’d be perfect for it!”

Riza smiled. They could be working in the same building again, living in the same city again. “That would mean moving to Central.”

That statement shocked the smile off Rebecca’s face. She pulled away and folded her hands in her lap. “Right.”

Riza’s chest constricted, and she felt cold. She hadn’t meant to imply Rebecca would move without Leo, as Leo couldn’t relocate his entire enterprise to Central. She opened her mouth to say so, but a knock at the door stopped her.

Rebecca let in the butler, who arranged plates, cups, and covered dishes on a table in the sitting room. When he had left, Rebecca and Riza sat on the settee with their backs against the armrests and bare feet planted on the cushions. They spoke of lighter subjects while they drank lemon ginger tea and ate fruits, breads, and little crescent-shaped walnut and vanilla biscuits.

Rebecca set her teacup aside. “You look good in that.”

Riza brushed her hand across the mauve dress skirt. It was a lovely colour and made from a soft, cool cloth that felt like water against her skin. It was certainly finer than anything she had ever owned. “It’s nice,” she said with a smile. “It’s very comfortable.”

Rebecca pushed her shoulders back and subdued her expression like she did when she was about to tell a lie. “You should keep it.” When Riza set her cup on its saucer and placed them both on the table, Rebecca said, “It’s more your colour, and it doesn’t fit me right—”

“Rebecca,” Riza said as she propped one elbow on the back of the settee and rested her chin on her fist. Of course, it didn’t fit Rebecca well.

“Riza,” Rebecca said, mimicking her posture. Then she leaned back with a wide grin. “I’m not taking it back.” She nudged Riza with her toe. “Oh, you like it.”

Riza did like it very much, so she smiled back and said, “Thank you.”

But after a few moments, Rebecca’s smile fell, and she looked out the large, heavily-curtained window with an almost mournful expression.

“What’s wrong?” Riza asked, worried that she had introduced more stress into Rebecca’s life with her confiding about the Führer or with her asking about Rebecca’s marriage.

Rebecca shook her head. “I’m just thinking about—” She stopped and pressed her lips together, then she jumped up and brushed off her skirt. “You know? I could…” She put her fists on her hips and looked around the room as if in search of a distraction. “I could really…” She looked at Riza. “Do you want to shoot something?”

Riza realized she had been aching for just that for days, to feel the adrenaline pump through her veins as she emptied magazine after magazine, to unleash anxieties and anger on a cardboard silhouette. She nodded. “The fair sounded nice. And I’m sure there will be a shooting range.” It wouldn’t be quite like the military ranges at which she trained, but at least it would be open to Rebecca. There were other benefits, too. “Between the two of us, I'm sure we'll clean out the prizes

Rebecca’s grin spread across her face. “Are you suggesting a hustle?”

Riza shrugged. “It’s only a hustle if we lie.”

* * *

David rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Grading was hell.

Not all papers gave him headaches: those written by upper-level and graduate students tended toward the coherent. But papers by first years were torture.

First years themselves were torture. They came to class to complete their core requirements, made no efforts in their coursework, and didn’t care if he knew about all of it. He wasn’t insulted by it—he had been a first year once and had sat through his share of classes he’d rather not have been in—but dealing with the results of their apathy was gruelling. He’d give each of them a passing grade if they’d all promise to never submit another assignment he’d have to read and mark.

He looked back at the pages in front of him. A tick here, a comment there…He sat up straighter and reread the first sentence of one paragraph.

“Radicalisation, therefore, is a process that preys upon the questioning of the world by providing mundane problems with extreme, and often unrelated, solutions.”

It sounded familiar, alarmingly so. So did the following sentence, and the one after it, and the one after that.

David turned in his chair, pulled a book from the shelf behind him, and flipped through the pages until he found the section he sought.

“‘Radicalisation, therefore,’” he read to himself, “‘is a process that preys upon the questioning of the world by providing mundane problems with extreme, and often unrelated, solutions.’”

He snapped the book shut and rubbed at his temple. That was why it sounded familiar. He had written it.

He turned back to the essay. He didn’t want to turn the kid in, because that would mean dealing with the Ethics Board, a panel of over-pious martinets who found the action of more interest then the motivation. David felt he understood the student’s motivation. He had once invoked the writing of professors in his least favourite classes.

Of course, David had paraphrased in those days.

The other option was marking a six, the lowest possible mark, and failing the student. That would mean dealing with him for another term.

So he flipped back to the first page and wrote “see me” above the title.

He’d endure office hours to teach the kid how to cite sources or, at least, how to reword them.

He shoved the essay to the side and stood up. There were seventeen more to mark, but he was out of coffee, and he was hungry. If he were quiet enough, he could even slip out and purchase a sandwich and some pastries from the nearby bakery. Mariya would appreciate something with cinnamon.

When he left his bedroom and walked into the kitchen, he found his concerns unnecessary.

Mariya sat at the table, her eyes closed, her cheek pressed against the red cloth, and a mug in one hand. 

“Are you alive?” he asked.

She groaned.

The night before, she had completed the final performance of Keller’s newest opera to rancorous applause, and then she had been required to attend the closing night gala with one of her more odious patrons. It was there that she had succeeded in becoming prodigiously drunk, as was her proclivity in such distasteful circumstances, before stumbling through the door at four in the morning, waking David, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, and ranting about the night in a blend of Amestrian, standard Drachman, and her native dialect until he had hefted her upright and dragged her to her own bed.

It had been exhausting for both of them.

Still, he was happy she had managed to wake up, even though it was late and even though she had yet to change out of her nightgown and diaphanous silk robe..

“More coffee?” he asked.

Mariya mumbled something and used one hand to push up and support her head. “You are loud.” 

He walked to her and lowered his voice. “I’m going to Schell’s to grab lunch. Do you want anything?”

She hummed and said, “Can you buy…” She clicked her tongue in thought, leaned back in her chair, and held up her index fingers. “Long and skinny bun with cinnamon and honey, ah?”

He was going to assure her that he had anticipated her request, but the telephone rang. Mariya swore in her native Belkovian dialect—he did not speak it, but he could discern it by its rounded vowels and rolling “r’s”—and she dropped her head to the table again.

He pulled the receiver from the box and was surprised to be greeted by the theatre manager. Mariya would not be performing again until the start of the winter season, but when the manager asked to speak with her, David said, “It’s Scarlatti for you.”

Mariya held out her hand.

“Masha,” he said. “The cord doesn’t stretch that far.”

She swore again, reciting a long string of Belkovian at him as she stood, walked toward him, and snatched the receiver from his hand. She leaned her head against the wall and said, “Hello.”

David slipped out of the flat and down three flights of stairs. Theirs was a newer building, constructed since the start of the Eastern Economic Boom—as his friends in the economics department called it—five years earlier, but it was in the heart of one of the older districts, surrounded by theatres and tiny shops and an assortment of cafés and bakeries frequented by artists and academics. Mariya had been trying to convince him to move north of the Marl River for months, as it would be closer to the opera house and closer to the university, but he liked the crammed streets and disjointed architecture. Uptown was too big, too quiet, and too clean.

Mr Schell knew him and anticipated Mariya’s order, and he slipped a few ginger and anise biscuits into the paper bag as he wished David a good afternoon and farewell.

He bought a copy of The Eastern Tribune on his way back, and he read as he climbed the three flights of stairs. There was climbing tension in the North, and there were riots in the streets of West City following the worst smog the city had ever seen.

He pushed open the door to their flat and stopped. Mariya no longer sat at the table but on the floor, her legs sticking through those of the piano bench while her feet tapped against the piano pedals. She had flipped the seat up and rummaged through her more favoured pieces.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he passed her to drop the pass and newspaper on the table.

“I have job,” she said, and she squinted at a sheet of music before scoffing, dropping the piece next to her, and fishing another one out of the bench.

David dumped the contents of the bag out. “You already have a job.”

“This is short job in Central,” she said. She rolled her head to the side to look at him. “I think it is good. We can go together. You can go to conference, I can do job…” She ran a hand through her short, dark curls and said, “Easy, ah?”

He narrowed his eyes. She was selling it to him, and that meant he wouldn’t like whatever favour the theatre manager had asked of her. “What do they want you to do?”

She rolled her eyes and said in a flat tone, “Juggle.” Then she redirected her attention back to her music.

David walked over to her. “You know what I meant.” He closed the bench and ignored her little noise of protest. “What’s the job?” She had sung on occasion for local administrators, sometimes at the private parties of various industry tycoons, once for a military propaganda film—they had fought over that one for weeks.

Her mouth twitched, and she said, “Party for Cretan Ambassador.”

He dropped onto the bench. It was much worse than the film. It was dangerous. “What?”

She had the temerity to look offended. “I need to pick song.”

He rubbed the stiffness in his jaw. She would be walking into a room filled with the most prominent government and military officials in the country, like it was nothing, like she had nothing to hide from them. “Is that wise?”

She poked his knee. “Move. I need to prepare.”

He shook his head. It was stupid. “It’s—” Then he stared at her because she must have considered all of that, and that meant something else had made her agree. He chose his next words with care. “Shouldn’t they have already reserved entertainment?” When she did not respond, but picked up a discarded piece with new interest, he knew he was correct. “Masha,” he said, and he grabbed her arm. “Who are you replacing?”

She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Edie Braun made controversial statement about Cretan—”

“Edie Braun?” He jumped up and his gut tightened as all air fled his body. “You’re taking a risk like this to score a point against Edie Braun?” He laughed and slapped a hand to his forehead because it made sense. Mariya hated Edie Braun, the “silly coloratura” who had become the darling of the Central Opera, who had managers scrambling to commission and produce shows featuring her vocal type, and who had forced Mariya to move to East City where dramatic soprano roles were still favoured. And she was risking everything over a feud that had lasted seven years. He threw his arms out. “What happened to not drawing attention to ourselves?”

Mariya shrugged as if it were an absurd thought. “I am famous opera singer.” She pointed to herself and added, “Attention comes. Nothing bad happens.” Then she turned back to stacks of music and tossed her head from side to side. “And I do not need point, ah? I know I am better.”

He scoffed and shook his head. It wasn’t about attention, not really. They were living normal lives, as they had been advised to do. Purposefully putting themselves in a room full of people who might ask questions and might be able to do something about the answers, putting themselves in situations where inevitably they would be vetted and all their secrets would be aired—that was another thing entirely.

She jabbed a book of songs at him. “Besides. You are one with friends in military.”

He held up a hand. “That is a very liberal use of the word.” He had begged his mother to not take the job for Mustang. “He’s a murderer, Ma,” he had said. “You can’t go work for a murderer.” He had offered to support her, to let her move in with him and Mariya if she wanted, even though the nature of their marriage would have become readily apparent and they would have had to tell her what they were doing. In the end, the offered salary had beaten his pleas.

His past aside, Mustang was arrogant and so confident of his own charm and intelligence. His reticent aide, the former sniper, was so ready to defend him, and David was sorry for it. Of course, there wasn’t much difference between shooting Ishvalans from the shadows and burning them en masse. She lacked the Flame Alchemist’s airs, though, so much so that he could almost believe she was penitent, not that it made up for anything. Two rides home and cautious pity were not friendship.

He would be content if he never encountered either of them again. 

That brought another point to mind. “Masha,” he said, and when she didn’t respond, he repeated, “Masha.”

She peered at him over the top of her songbook.

“The more involved we get with these people,” he said, “the more they will ask questions.”

Mariya shrugged. “So we give them nothing to ask, ah?” She waved her hand as she continued, “One hotel, one bed, one week. This is not so bad.”

He turned away and rubbed the back of his neck. He needed a moment, just a moment to parse his argument from his mounting anxieties.

“And maybe I am tired of waiting,” she said, and he felt a hand on his shoulder jerk him back around. She had stood up to challenge him. “Six years, David.” She poked him in the chest. “Six years we are trying and waiting and nothing!” She poked him again. “Your mother has connection, I say use it, you say no! Because you are scared!” she said and she shoved him hard.

He rubbed the spot where she had pushed him as his pulse quickened. “I don’t want to go to fucking prison!”

“Ha!” Her lip curled. “You have been before.”

“That’s completely different!” And then it had been for only a few months at a time. He ran a hand through his hair. “And I’m not exactly eager to go back.” He reached forward and grabbed her shoulders before she could turn away from him. “We’re talking years, Masha. Decades.”

She rolled her eyes.

He shook her once because she wasn’t understanding. “And what about you? If they find out, you get sent to a woman’s prison here if you’re lucky. But they could send you back to Drachma. And what then?” It was cruel, he knew, to threaten her with the possibility of forced starvation in her native Belkovia or, worse, an angry Prince Vasilly.

She pushed his hands away. “It was your idea to do this!”

He turned and went to the kitchen table, where he pressed his hands against the wood and took deep breaths.

Mariya followed him and put her left hand on his. “Maybe we need friends in military and government,” she said in a calm voice. “Maybe we can use connections.” She slid into a chair and squeezed his fingers. “And I can make good friends,” she said with a smile. “One general has regular box. Another has brother who is patron. I can use this.”

He dropped into a squat and squeezed his eyes shut.

She shook his hand. “I can get information to keep us safe.”

He opened his eyes and leaned his head against one arm to watch her.

“I can do it,” she said. “You know this.”

Unfortunately, he did know, for her ability to sniff out dirty secrets was the reason she had come from Drachma to Amestris in the first place.

She leaned forward. “If we keep waiting, we will be here forever.”

She was right. Part of him had always known that she was right, though he didn’t want to admit it. There had been no progress for years, and they had no reason to anticipate that things would change if they weren’t proactive.

It was time to make and use connections.

He sighed. “‘The’ military.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Ah?”

He shook his head. “‘The’ military, ‘the’ government, ‘the’ right friends.”

She considered him with pursed lips and narrowed eyes, then she reached into the centre of the table and pulled her bun toward her. “Thank you for conceding.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“Is that why you correct my Amestrian?” she said. “Because you are hiding excellent point?” Then she snapped her fingers and said, “Oh. ‘The’ excellent point.”

David closed his eyes. “That’s not—” Then he stopped himself and took a breath because he knew she was goading him. Instead he said what he always said in similar moments, as it was something of a joke between them. “I want a divorce.”

Mariya clicked her tongue and grabbed and shook his chin. “Oh, vieta menoya balvoya, chetnavka.” My poor, little monkey.

He smacked her hand away. “Don’t do that.”

She used her other hand to pat his cheek. “So do I.” Then she turned her attention to her food. “I think you will be happy. I think university will not pay for lodging like theatre, ah?”

It was true that whenever he spoke at academic conferences he ended up in hotel rooms that were less than appealing. On one trip he had found himself bunking with a large rat. On another, his bunkmates had been a family of roaches. 

Mariya took a bite and moaned in exaggerated ecstasy.

David pushed himself to his feet and walked around the table to sit in the opposite chair.

“Maybe now you use your friend,” Mariya said.

“She’s not—” David reconsidered his rebuttal as he unwrapped his sandwich. “‘Friends’ are people you like.”

She shrugged. “I do not like half of my friends.”

He leaned forward, his concerns for the moment alleviated by the familiarity of banter. “Then they’re not your friends.” He bit into his sandwich.

She snorted. “You are my best friend and I hate you.”

He almost choked. He covered his mouth with his hand while he chewed, coughed, and tried to swallow. When the coughing had subsided, he looked up and nodded. “That’s something to consider.”

Mariya grinned and flicked one of the ginger and anise biscuits across the table, hitting him on the shoulder. Then she threw her head back and laughed as if she hadn’t known worry in all her life.

* * *

Mustang rubbed his jaw while the hopeful alchemist before him bowed with an awkwardness that betrayed his embarrassment. An attendant came forward to lead the candidate out of the practical testing room, and Mustang lowered his pen to write his score and thoughts. Another examinee, another disappointment.

“Did anyone get a passing score today?” asked Duncan Vandergraff, the Voltaic Alchemist.

Mustang shook his head. The highest mark he had given that day had been a six, and even the admittedly talented young lady who had earned it had not presented anything original to himself and the other board members.

“I am inspired by their perseverence and courage,” said Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong, the Strong-Arm Alchemist.

“Well, of course, you are,” said Vandergraff, and a few other board members chuckled.

Armstrong held up his hands. “Even you must see the beauty in their courage. Coming forward to present the best of themselves to a panel of the harshest critics!”

Mustang capped his pen and leaned back. “Courage?” he asked. “Or delusion?” The entire morning had been a waste of time, in his opinion. He should have anticipated another dry year. It seemed that alchemical research outside that of the existing State Alchemists had stagnated.

He looked down the long table where the seven members of the State Alchemist board sat. He was the highest-ranked and longest-standing State Alchemist amongst them, and although they maintained an emphasis on equality—in the name of those alchemical ideals all students learned—he had assumed a sort of management role. “Are we all agreed, then?” he asked. “No one passes this year?”

Vandergraff dropped his pen on his score sheets and held up his hands in defeat. Clara Gaspar, the Prism Alchemist, nodded. The Life Blood Alchemist, the Polarity Alchemist, and the Landslide Alchemist followed suit.

Mustang slapped his hand on the table. “Great.” He pushed his score sheets into a stack and tapped them on the table to straighten them.

“I wanted to thank you,” Armstrong said over the chatter of the other panelists and the scraping of chair legs, “for letting me borrow Major Hawkeye later this month.”

Mustang tucked his pen into his jacket pocket and smiled. “She was flattered to be considered.” Armstrong had been placed in charge of security for the Cretan Ambassador’s welcome party, and while Hawkeye’s actual response had been more dutiful than enthusiastic, it seemed the best response to cut the pleasantries and leave. Rebecca had given him a brief overview of her plans before he had departed that morning, and if he were quick, he would be back at the hotel in time to intercept them for dinner.

Armstrong glistened in return. “I need only the best to secure the building.”

After he became the Führer and he was no longer her superior officer, he would take Hawkeye on a real date, the kind with flowers and fine meals. She would narrow her eyes at him and bite back a smile the entire time.

“With all the trouble brewing, I can’t be too careful,” Armstrong continued.

Mustang, his attention drawn back to the present, looked at him. “Are you expecting something?”

Armstrong shook his head. “No, but with the unrest on our borders and with everything on the radio…” He looked up at the ceiling. “My dear sister was not too pleased about that.”

Mustang grunted. He was acutely aware of General Armstrong’s displeasure over the events of the previous month, though he would not have used the same adjective her brother used to describe her.

“Eh, Mustang?” called Vandergraff.

Mustang leaned forward to look around Armstrong’s massive form, barely contained in his tight blue uniform.

Vandergraff pointed to Gaspar. “We were just talking about Edward Elric’s examination.”

Mustang clenched his jaw. It had been twelve years to the day since Edward had stood in that room, on the tile floor surrounded by the gallery and every State Alchemist the military boasted—for no one wanted to miss the practical of the twelve-year-old who had passed the written exam on his first try—and performed alchemy of which Mustang had never conceived.

Gaspar nodded and tapped her chin. “I remember. Transmutation without a circle. I’d never seen anything like it.”

“He teach you to do it?” Vandergraff asked.

While under any other circumstances Mustang would be affronted by the thought that Edward Elric could teach him anything, his thoughts went in another direction. His hands twitched, the scars burning like he could still feel Führer Bradley’s swords driving through his flesh, pinning him to a transmutation circle and sending him hurtling into that timeless void where he had stared into the malicious smile of Truth standing before those black doors. His heart pounded in recollection of the terror of emerging from those doors, from the place where all the knowledge in the universe was stored, and finding himself unable to see. He met Armstrong’s eyes for a brief moment and looked away. “No,” he said. “He didn’t.”

“He was so rash!” Gaspar said. “Remember how he almost attacked the Führer?”

Mustang checked his pockets to ensure he had all of his things in order, and he stood and prepared to announce his departure.

Before he could, the attendant threw open the doors. “Sirs! There’s a last-minute applicant.”

Conversation in the room stilled, and Mustang glanced at the other alchemists and found they were all looking at him, waiting for his response. How last-minute? The written exam had concluded the day before, and only those who had passed were admitted to the practical. The “last-minute applicant” hadn’t sat for the exam, then. He took a deep breath, annoyance rising up his neck, and said, “Who authorised this?”

The attendant read a sheet on his clipboard. “The Führer, Sir.”

Mustang narrowed his eyes. He wondered if Grumman was having a laugh at shaking up the examinations by exercising his right as the head military power to push any applicant through, or if Vogel were getting too used to his new position. “Did he?” he said through gritted teeth. Then he dropped back into his chair.

The attendant shuffled his feet, said he would deliver some blank score sheets, and left again.

He pulled out his pen and glared at the table, as if it were the fault of the wood grain that he might not have the night he had anticipated.

The other board members grumbled as well, and all of them wondered aloud who the applicant could be.

“I remember his brother too,” Gaspar mused. “They were both so talented.”

Talented, and a constant thorn in his side. Though, he admitted, neither Elric was as big of a thorn as this surprise candidate who was keeping him from a very pleasant evening.

“Do you think either of them would be interested?” Vandergraff asked Mustang. “I, for one, would be willing to hold a special examination to get the Fullmetal Alchemist back. Even if he can’t perform alchemy, to just have his mind working with us again…”

And though Edward had brought up reenlistment only a few weeks earlier, Mustang said, “No, I don’t think so.” He wouldn’t be able to stomach overseeing Edward Elric a second time, seeing his smug face and listening to his obnoxious voice and narcissistic ramblings.

The door opened again, and the attendant returned and passed each board member a blank score sheet. While Mustang filled in his name, title, rank, and identification number, the door opened again, and even footfalls echoed through the room.

“State your name for the record, please,” said the attendant.

“Um,” said a familiar voice that made Mustang’s heart thud against his ribs. “Alphonse Elric.”

Mustang raised his head, and there, in the middle of the room, as if he belonged there, stood Alphonse Elric. Mustang wanted to leap over the table and strangle the sheepish smile off of the boy's face, but all of his limbs had gone tense. Alphonse was supposed to be the responsible Elric. Alphonse was supposed to be the likeable Elric. Getting himself exiled from Xing was one thing, but applying to become a State Alchemist—it was preposterous.

Because he would pass. Of course, Alphonse would pass. And since he was a resident of the East, he would fall under Mustang’s jurisdiction. Mustang would spend the rest of his career—the rest of his life, maybe—cleaning up Elric-made disasters.

He folded his hands in front of his face, leaned forward, furrowed his brow, and seethed.

“Ah, young Alphonse!” Armstrong called with a joviality that made Mustang’s eye twitch. “How long it’s been! Are you well?”

Alphonse caught Mustang’s glare and his smile fell. “Fine,” he said.

“You’ve just returned from Xing, correct?” said Gaspar.

Mustang leaned back, crossed his arms, and bit the insides of his cheeks.

“Yes,” said Alphonse, looking at the floor, at the other alchemists, at the ceiling. Anywhere but at Mustang.

His pulse pounded. He wanted to call a stop to it, to grab Alphonse by the ear and drag him from the room and throw him into the river outside. But even the Flame Alchemist would not defy an order from Grumman’s office—not publicly, and not with his reputation and his campaign looming overhead.

So he sat in stony silence while the other board members encouraged Alphonse to begin. He dug his fingers into his arms when Alphonse asked to borrow a pocket watch and one of the other board members made a joke about street magicians and disappearing personal effects. He limbered his shoulders and neck when Alphonse clapped and, to the delight of the other observers performed a transmutation without a circle—which was in its own way ridiculous and uninspired, as Mustang could do it, and Edward had done it as his own exam twelve years earlier. He cracked his neck from side to side when Alphonse transmuted two knives with long, thin blades like trench knives from the tile floor, flexed and curled his fingers when a board member made another joke about weapons and just how similar to his brother Alphonse was.

Alphonse looped the pocket watch chain around one blade and drove the knife into the wooden wainscotting on the western wall, and then he walked to the eastern wall and drove the second blade in. He looked at the board members and said, “I can repair the holes when I’m finished.”

Vandergraff waved a hand. “Don’t worry. Please, keep going.” On the other side of him, Gaspar pressed a hand over her mouth with a giddiness Mustang hadn’t seen since she had presented her findings on using alchemy for skeletal healing. 

Next to Mustang, Armstrong gleamed with something akin to joy and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. “He’s grown into such a fine, young man,” he said.

Mustang decided that, the Führer or Vogel be damned, he wasn’t going to sit through another second. He would put a stop to it. He jumped up to say that they had seen circle-less transmutation before and that there would be no need to finish the exam if all he could produce was a copy of his brother’s research—

Alphonse had the audacity to clap his hands and press his palm flat against the wall, just below the knife. A flash of golden light surrounded his hand, and threads of electricity radiated along the knife’s blade. Worst of all, the reaction was mirrored on the opposite wall, with the current travelling down the chain of the pocket watch.

It was a long-distance transmutation, something Mustang had seen the Xingese princess do on multiple occasions, and something he was not surprised Alphonse had managed to learn. But the implications of revealing that technique to the military, of handing it to an organisation that Alphonse knew produced and deployed human weapons—

The reaction ended, and instead of a pocket watch, a tiny mechanical bird swung back and forth on the chain, flapping its wings and chirping.

Several board members applauded, and all turned to look at Mustang who realised he was still standing.

As he looked at the other Alchemists, Mustang met Armstrong's now hardened glance, and he knew the other man had come to the same conclusions. He too had imagined explosions detonated by Alphonse from miles away, acts of horrendous violence that neither of them would wish him to commit. How easily would Bradley’s militarized Alchemists have levelled Ishval with this power?

They may have restructured their military, may have found some moral stability and assurance in a new government and an evolving constitution, but that would not matter. War was unchanging.

Armstrong nodded.

They were in agreement then: Alphonse must fail.

Mustang cleared his throat. “Let me see it.”

Alphonse scurried to the opposite wall, removed the chain from the blade and returned with the tweeting automaton, but he kept his head low like a child caught thieving sweets. He dropped the bird in Mustang’s outstretched hand and shuffled back.

The bird, to Mustang’s dismay, was a marvel. Its beak opened and closed with every sound, its wings flapped with an almost natural rhythm. Every tweet set his nerves on edge. Every beat of wings pushed his temperature higher. He should not have been surprised. He had known both Elrics for years, and while Edward had always been bombast and raw power, the sort of alchemy that astounded with its breadth and might—though not with its garish and sometimes offensive execution—Alphonse had been precision, flawless technique, and quick-thinking.

He held the end of the chain and let the bird drop and swing. Then he held the chain out to Alphonse. “Turn it back.” If the exam had to continue, then Mustang would ensure it continued long enough for Alphonse to mess up.

Alphonse stepped forward again, but as he did, something in him changed. His shoulders pushed down and back, his chin lifted, and there, in his eyes, was a fire with which Mustang was too familiar.

The Elrics did not look the same. Over the years, people who thought Mustang would care to know had informed him that Edward looked like their father—and Mustang had to accept this as true, for while he had met their father, he had never seen him—and Alphonse looked like their mother. There were certain similarities, like the shape of their noses and their jawlines, but there the resemblance ended. Their personalities were so disparate, it was hard to believe they had grown up together.

But that look, that defiant glare…The way he clapped his hands and touched the watch Mustang still held, the way he never broke eye contact, the way he pulled it away when the transmutation was complete, the confidence with which he pushed it across the long table to Vandergraff…That was all Edward.

Mustang lowered his hand to the table and took deep breaths. He had known Alphonse to be outspoken—headstrong, even—but this new attitude bordered on recalcitrance and stupidity.

“The time is wrong,” Vendergraff joked. “It’s off by about an hour.”

Alphonse turned his head and smiled. “I can adjust it if you like.”

“Your knives,” said Gaspar. “Do they have a special construction?”

“No,” Alphonse said. He continued as he walked, pulling each blade from the wood wainscoting and, as promised, repairing the holes. “They could be anything, really. I’m just creating focal points that mirror each other.” He bent down and returned the knives to the floor, dispersing the elements in the tiles so that, other than those telltale lines of a recent transmutation, there was no indication he had done anything. “It helps the energy—” He stopped and brushed his hands on his trousers as he stood. He rubbed the back of his neck and mumbled something in Xingese. Then he said, “I’m sorry. I’m having trouble translating it into Amestrian.”

That all but knocked Mustang back into his chair. He braced his hands on his knees and dug his fingers into the skin.

Gaspar held up a soothing hand. “It’s very impressive.”

Alphonse nodded at her, but he looked at Mustang again when he said, “Thank you.” He didn’t wait for the attendant, but turned on his heel and strode toward the exit.

As Alphonse left, Vandergraff called, “Make sure you schedule a time for the written exam!”

No sooner had the door closed than the room erupted into excited conversation and praises that made Mustang’s head pound and his blood run hot.

Armstrong leaned in with his arms crossed and said, “They’re all going to pass him.”

Mustang watched the other board members talk amongst themselves with animated expressions and gestures. The decision did not have to be unanimous. Alphonse needed only a majority of the board to give him a passing mark, and they were willing. Part of him could understand their excitement. Part of him thought he was being ridiculous. Alphonse was three years older than Mustang had been when he had become a State Alchemist.

The saner part of him knew that it didn’t matter. Even with three extra years, a man like Alphonse would never be ready for what the military would ask of him.

Mustang pushed his forms into a pile and placed Alphonse’s, still blank, at the bottom. He would forego the vote. Alphonse would pass with or without his score sheet. Then he got to his feet and said, “See if you can do something about the exam. I’m going to convince him to withdraw.”

He left the room without waiting for Armstrong’s assent, but when he ran into the hall, Alphonse had already disappeared.

Mustang did not see him in the Central Headquarters entrance hall, and he could not see him in the courtyard. Alphonse had either run or transmuted himself to a safer location.

However, Alphonse was still in the city, and he would be taking the exam the following day. As long as he remained in Central, Mustang had time to find him, but he would need to begin searching immediately.

He ran to his rented automobile and slammed himself inside. He drove faster than Hawkeye would deem advisable, especially during a high-traffic hour, and when he reached the hotel he threw the keys at a valet and pushed his way into the lobby.

He knew from Rebecca that they might be in the lounge before dinner, so that was where he went.

The women were sitting around a table with a few others, one of whom was quite tall and blond. Under normal circumstances, Neumann’s proximity to Hawkeye would have made Mustang’s anxiety climb further, but there were other things to preoccupy him that night. Not least of those things was how Hawkeye looked.There was something divine about the new developments in women’s fashion, in those high collars in the back that swooped around into lower necklines, almost as if Cretan fashion designers had collectively decided to cater to the dressing needs of a woman who might not want to show her back, but may want to accentuate other features. On any other night Mustang would delight in sitting and appreciating the curve of her collarbone and what the colour of the dress did for the flush in her cheeks, but just then he needed her in another capacity.

She had an uncanny ability to sense when he was near, and she looked up from her group and met his eyes.

He smiled to let her know he was sorry, but it was urgent. She nodded once in return, and he turned away and stalked back to the lobby where he asked a concierge if he could bring two telephones and a directory of all nearby hotels to the sitting area in the corner. Then he went to one of the armchairs and sat.

He waited for only a few moments before he heard the click of her heels against the tile and saw her lower herself into the chair next to his. “We need to find where Alphonse Elric is staying,” he explained. “I want to know by morning.”

She sighed and folded her hands in her lap and said in that patient way of hers, “He’s in Resem—”

“He’s not,” Mustang said, and he darted his eyes toward the ground and back to her.

She furrowed her brow and deflated. “Oh.”

He jerked his head toward the lobby door. “The exams just ended.”

Hawkeye’s eyes widened. “No.”

The concierge arrived with the directory and busied himself connecting the two telephones to outlets in the wall.

Mustang flipped open the leather-bound directory and scanned the first page. There were hundreds of hotels in the city. Their search would take hours. “I’ll take odds,” he said.

“Is everything alright? Our table is almost ready,” Rebecca said from behind them.

Hawkeye turned in her chair to look at Rebecca while Mustang continued to flip through pages and pages of hotel addresses and telephone numbers. “Alphonse Elric applied to be a State Alchemist today,” Hawkeye said. “And I assume it went well.”

Mustang snorted. What a word to describe how the younger Elric brother had done. “Now we have to find him and make him withdraw his application before the military extends an offer.”

Rebecca huffed and turned to the concierge. “Can we take all this up to my suite, please?” After the concierge assured her that it would be no trouble, ma’am, she shrugged at Mustang. “What? There’s a telephone in my room. I can help.”

He and Hawkeye looked at each other and back at Rebecca. Neither of them had known her to take a personal interest in the lives of the Elrics.

Rebecca pulled Riza to her feet. “I’m not letting you work alone today, on your birthday,” she added with a sharp look in Mustang’s direction, ”and I doubt I can convince you to not work at all.”

Mustang stood. “Three can get it done faster.”

“Good.” Rebecca linked arms with Riza, and the three of them walked to the lift. While they waited, Rebecca added, “Besides, I’m hungry, and they won’t deliver room service to the lobby.”

Hawkeye looked at him then, and he avoided meeting her eyes. As was often the case, he had, in his haste, forgotten about food.

The lift attendant opened the gate, and when they began to climb, Rebecca said, “You know, you should really consider setting up auxiliary campaign offices in other regions.”

He understood her meaning. How dare he pull Hawkeye away on her night off, and he did feel remorse creep over him, but he didn’t have a choice. If he had an army of telephone operators at his disposal who could place calls for him, he would have used it. Then again, finding Alphonse was not relevant to his campaign effort. “There are rules about using campaign resources for military and government purposes,” he said.

“Sure, but I don’t mean for this,” Rebecca said. “You won’t reach many in the South, or anywhere, if you camp out in the East.”

He looked at Hawkeye to see what she thought of such a proposal, and she smiled at him.

Yes, it might be a good idea. He would need to discuss the cost of such an operation with Charlie in the morning, but finding Alphonse would come first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so the Great FireWall sucks. But in August that will be gone and everything will be fine. Just gotta...Hang on until August.
> 
> Thank you for continuing to stick with me!
> 
> I have been considering doing a series of posts on my [tumblr](https://dyannehs.tumblr.com/) about the historicity of this (because I'm an archaeologist (or was before I moved to China to be a teacher), and I do my due fucking diligence...too much due fucking diligence), where I'm pulling for campaign effects, why I chose First Lady as the title over something like Madame Führer (and how there were, according to historians, anywhere between two and five First Ladies of the Third Reich—or Erste Dame der Deutsches Reich/Erste Dame der Großdeutsches Reich). If you'd be interested, drop me a note.
> 
> Drachman is also not a real language. But I am just winging it far more than I'm winging Xingese. Because I do speak Mandarin, and a few other languages, but Russian is not one of them.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you're having a good time, or hit me up on tumblr for a chat!
> 
> (To answer a question, yes this is cross-posted on ao3, ffn, and umblr)


	13. Chapter 13

Alphonse straightened his tie and buttoned his waistcoat. Looking more professional wouldn’t affect his written score—and there was no need to feel so nervous anyway since he was going to pass—but the panelists the day before had put the necessity of dressing well into his head. They had talked about Edward so much, and Alphonse loved his brother, but he also needed to distinguish himself from the twelve-year-old who draped himself in black and red and caused a ruckus everywhere he went.

He was Alphonse, and he was finished being the screw-up.

In the mirror, he could see Mei tracing her finger along the top of the footboard of their hotel bed.

“You want to know something stupid?” she said.

Alphonse smoothed his collar and his hair.

“I miss redang.”

He stopped checking his appearance and turned to her. It was only natural that she would. The time of year when summer gave way to fall was the same time of year that the Xingese ate those special sticky rice balls, sweetened with dates and red beans and wrapped up in bamboo leaves. Mei would not have them that year.

She would not have so many things.

“There’s a sizable Xingese population here,” he said. “I’m sure we can find redang when I get back.”

She nodded and rested her head against the top of the footboard. “Yi baxian zhewen paiqun gong xufen de?”

He was confident they could find xufen, too, those round oven-baked cakes shaped like the moon and filled with red bean paste and eaten mid-Autumn. “Zhe baxian.” Perhaps they might not find the specific kind her clan made, not baked but steamed and filled with fruit custards. If they couldn’t find them, he’d make them. He promised her as much. “Duiyin zhewen er paiqun, zhe jiao xun.”

Mei snorted, and then she fell back on the bed and cackled.

“Xiezhi?” he asked.

“Yi...” She struggled through peals of laughter to say, “Yi er liu jiao xun!”

Alphonse scowled at her. She was laughing and that was good, but he resented her insistence that he couldn’t cook. It was just like alchemy, but with food, right? “Zhe liu lu.” Besides, it was not as if she were a great chef either. “Yi ta er liu jiao xun.”

Mei, still wearing a broad smile, sat up and brushed her unbound hair from her face. “Zhe mei yi.”

He walked to the bed and kissed her, and when he pulled back, he said, “Zhe ta mei yi.” Then he pushed up his sleeve to check his wristwatch—soon enough he would have a State Alchemist's silver-plated pocket watch—and saw that while he had time, he should leave soon. One of the exam attendants had told him the day before that if he were more than fifteen minutes late, he would be disqualified.

Alphonse wanted to be as early as possible. He had seen General Mustang’s and Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong’s faces, and he had no doubts about their somehow interfering.

He gave himself one more glance in the mirror, then headed for the door.

Mei called from behind him, “Ganglai!”

He held up two strong fists to show her he would do his best, and then he pushed his way out of the hotel room and rushed down the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. His fingers tingled on the bannister, and his chest swelled as he strode through the dim hotel lobby.

He wasn’t taking the exam for himself, but there was something so sweet about knowing that he was going to, and that it would be easy, and that—

He stepped out of the hotel and found himself face-to-face with Roy Mustang.

The general leaned against a black automobile with his arms crossed, and he jerked his head toward the back passenger door. “Get in,” he said.

Alphonse should have anticipated that General Mustang would not even let him leave his hotel. “No, thanks,” Alphonse said. “I’m going to walk. It’s not too far.” He had chosen the hotel for its proximity to Central Headquarters, and he had been looking forward to the opportunity to clear his head before the exam. Besides, he had witnessed and often been included in the General’s ambushing Edward in the same way. Nothing good waited for him in that automobile.

Instead, he turned to start toward Headquarters, but Mustang grabbed Alphonse by his collar so quickly he choked, and then he tossed him into the automobile and onto the hard leather bench and slammed the door shut.

Alphonse pushed himself upright and saw that Riza was part of Mustang’s little plot, and she was looking at him in the rearview mirror and whispering, “Don’t talk.”

‘Where are we going?” Alphonse asked, his neck tight with the certainty that it would be far from his destination.

Riza shook her head, gripped the wheel, and stared straight ahead while General Mustang slid into the front passenger’s seat. Then she shifted the gears, and the automobile lurched forward and sent Alphonse careening into the bench back.

Riza was a skilled driver, as Alphonse knew from experience, and she was no stranger to using her keen sight and instinct to safely break any number of traffic laws, but that knowledge didn’t keep Alphonse’s stomach from rising as she wove between other vehicles at an alarming speed. Alphonse braced his hands on either side of himself and stared at the space between Riza and Mustang. If he looked out a side window, he’d be sick.

Mustang appeared less perturbed, “How is it,” he asked, as if he were inquiring about the weather, “that in four weeks you have managed to cause more problems for me than your brother did in four years?”

Alphonse bit the insides of his cheeks. He did not think it was a fair assessment. He could recall dozens, if not hundreds, of messes Edward had created in the East during his own time as a State Alchemist. All Alphonse had managed to do was get himself exiled from a foreign nation and show up to take an exam for which Mustang knew he was more than qualified. “I think Ed caused more than two—”

Mustang slammed his hand against the shoulder of Riza’s seat and glared at Alphonse. After a moment’s pause, he clapped his hands together and touched his door.

“Sir!” Riza cried as the reaction crackled and spread along the sides of the automobile, sealing the doors closed. She did not falter in her driving, though her knuckles were white and her eyebrows knit while she and Mustang looked at each other and had one of their silent exchanges. He remembered Captain Havoc had called them "nonversations".

Alphonse rolled his eyes. “I could just use alchemy to get out,” he said. Of course, he would not risk it at the pace they were travelling. Once he would have, but then he had not had bones or internal organs to consider. 

Mustang threw his hands up and huffed at Riza, then he leaned back and continued as if Alphonse had never spoken. “It was a clever trick you pulled. Showing up before anyone could dissuade you, using your name to get the Führer’s office to approve it, not even telling your brother—Oh, I already know,” he said, and he nodded in satisfaction. “We spoke less than an hour ago.”

Alphonse closed his eyes, but that was worse, because he would still feel himself hurtling down streets without having the sight to adjust. He rolled his shoulders back. He knew he should have told Edward at least, before he had telephoned the Führer’s office and asked if the Führer could submit a letter or something that would guarantee his late admission. But Edward would demand to know what he had been thinking, and he would have done it loudly and with emphatic language.

He leaned back, swallowed and took deep breaths. Even after having his body back for eight years, his sense of balance was slightly off, and he had never been able to sit in the back of vehicles without feeling ill. He didn’t know if Mustang and Riza were aware of that, but it wouldn’t surprise him if Mustang’s intimidation tactics included disorienting Alphonse with motion-sickness.

“Here's what we're going to do," Mustang said. Edward called the general's confidence arrogance, and Alphonse had to agree. “We’re going to take you to Central Headquarters. We’re going to walk in. We’re going to go to the exam room. You’re going to withdraw your application.”

“No!” Alphonse said. He leaned forward when Mustang didn’t flinch at his protestation and added, “I’m not going to.”

“You will,” Mustang said, every inch the smug bastard Edward had always claimed he was.

“I’m not afraid of you.” Alphonse said because he was finished with Mustang and his deciding what Alphonse could do and where he could go and what he could say.

Mustang pointed to his right, Riza jerked the steering wheel, and they rounded a corner and barrelled away from Headquarters.

Alphonse clenched his jaw and said, “I know how you work. You want everyone to blindly follow your orders, and if they don’t, you bully them into submission.” He knew all of General Mustang’s moves. He had watched him play his games for years.

Mustang leaned his head back. “Do you know what they’ll make you do if you don’t withdraw?”

Ignoring people was a favourite Mustang approach to getting his way. “Why do you care so much?” Alphonse asked. Mustang ought to be thanking him. He had first appeared to Alphonse and Edward while in pursuit of an alchemist who could boost his own standing in the military. Alphonse was a better alchemist than Edward had been over ten years earlier.

“You know what I’m picturing?” Mustang held his hands up and spread his fingers as if smoothing a canvas. “An operative abroad helps you set up one of your ’focal points,’” he said while curling his index and middle fingers. “Then the military makes you send over tonnes and tonnes of explosives, which you then detonate. From kilometres away, you detonate enough explosives to take out an entire city.”

The image made Alphonse’s heart falter, and he said, “I wouldn’t—”

“But I suppose there’s a bright side,” Mustang said with a slight bite in his tone. “You won’t be close enough to see the men and women and children you’ll be killing. You’ll be so far you won’t even hear them scream.”

Alphonse’s breath caught. Neither Mustang nor Riza had ever discussed Ishval with him, but he had read enough and heard enough from others over the years to understand that Mustang meant Alphonse might one day be the “hero” of the looming war. Mustang miscalculated, though. Alphonse was not like Roy Mustang, the Hero of Ishval. “I won’t!” he said. “I’d use it to help people.”

Mustang scoffed and crossed his arms. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

Alphonse’s stomach hardened, and he curled his toes inside of his shoes. “I can’t even do it from more than a few metres away,” he said.

Mustang waved one hand. “Oh, don’t worry. In a couple years, that’ll be different.”

Alphonse doubted that. He had studied for five years to be able to perform long-distance transmutation at all, and for the subsequent three he had only increased his distance by a few metres. It was unlikely he would be able to multiply that distance by one thousand in the same amount of time.

“Do you know how you keep your certification, Alphonse?”

“Yes,” he said.

Mustang continued to ignore what Alphonse said. “You submit—”

“I know,” Alphonse snapped. He had been with Edward when Edward had needed to renew his certification. Edward had always turned in some hastily-patched research from his notes, something irrelevant to their continued search for the Philosopher’s Stone.

“I don’t think you do,” Mustang said, and he turned in his seat to look at Alphonse. “Your brother was given incredible freedom because of his age. The military couldn’t use him tactically yet, so it was agreed he would get to pick his contributions until he became a legal adult. But you’re not a child.” He frowned and turned around to face the windscreen again. “You know what’s interesting?” he asked, poison dripping off the last word. “You’re the same age I was.”

Alphonse recalled Edward’s telling him that he thought Alphonse was more similar to the General than Edward was. Just then, as Mustang insinuated that Alphonse would ever take part in something as heinous as the Ishval Extermination Campaign, he resented the idea. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I’m not you.”

The car swerved slightly, and Riza whispered an apology, but Mustang remained calm, as if he had anticipated that response. “Keep saying that,” he said. “Maybe it’ll come true.”

Alphonse crossed his arms. He was vaguely aware of the rushing of buildings past them, of the sway of the automobile, over the hammering of his heartbeat in his ears. It was so like the General to show up and tell Alphonse what he could think and do and how he could think and do it. It was as if he thought Alphonse incapable of making a sound decision. Getting himself exiled from Xing had been a one-time mistake, and he had been doing just fine as the interim ambassador until—

“What’s the first law of being a State Alchemist?” Mustang asked.

Alphonse looked up too quickly as Hawkeye rounded another corner, and he braced himself against the bench back and swallowed hard.

“It’s ‘obey the military,’ Alphonse,” Mustang continued with apparent derision. “You won’t be given the same freedom your brother had. You’ll be expected to expand on your current skill set. And expand in ways that benefit combat.” His voice rose with each word. “Believe me, that will happen. This is a military program. You will be a military asset—a weapon, Alphonse. They will aim you, they will fire you, and there will be nothing you can do to stop it.”

Alphonse brightened when he remembered something from the military handbook Edward had received years ago—Edward had read the table of contents and then tossed it aside, but Alphonse had always been the responsible one. “I can refuse an order if—”

“‘Any unlawful order made by a direct superior or a higher-ranked officer outside the direct chain of command.’ I know.” Mustang snorted. “The military is so wound up in the government even now. If it’s an unlawful order, they will make it lawful.”

“You’re a four-star general,” Alphonse said, because what was the point in having a high ranking if Mustang wouldn’t use it? “You can—”

“There are four others!” Mustang shouted as he slammed one hand against Riza’s seat and turned to look at Alphonse. The automobile swerved and Riza said, “Sir!” while Mustang continued, “Four others who would have no problem issuing those orders to you.”

Alphonse could see the unspoken frustration in the tightness in Mustang’s jaw. Of the five who sat on the Generals’ Council, Mustang had been the last appointed. According to protocol, even among those who were his equals in title, he was the lowest ranked and the least powerful.

Mustang nodded once, took a deep breath and said, “Right. Let’s go.”

"I'm not withdrawing," Alphonse said.

"You'll quit. One day they'll ask you to do something you'll regret for the rest of your life and you'll walk out. But it won't be before they get their hands on your research and figure out exactly how to weaponise it." Mustang found Alphonse's eyes in the rear-view mirror. "It's impressive how determined you are to destroy your own soul."

Alphonse pressed his lips together. If it were as easy for the military to obtain and weaponise his research as Mustang said, there would be dozens of Flame Alchemists running around. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less it made sense. He had read some of Mustang’s papers, and he had always described the alchemical reaction of burning as a two-part process, yet his research had only ever described the second part, the conversion of one burning substance into another and its byproducts. Alphonse had never encountered any of Mustang’s research that described how to cause ignition. “Did you turn over the ability to make fire?”

Mustang turned around and slammed his hand against the back of Hawkeye’s seat again. She gasped, the automobile swerved, a horn blared, and she swore—at least Alphonse thought she did—under her breath. 

“Why are you doing this?” Mustang demanded. “Is it for information and research access? I can get you that.”

Alphonse dug his nails into his palms as his heart beat faster. Mustang always assumed everyone could be bought, and even if he were right in Alphonse’s case, Alphonse couldn’t let him know.

“Is it money? Do you need money? I have plenty of it.”

Because if Mustang knew, Alphonse would be the one paying. 

“Are you punishing me? Is this about what happened when you came back?”

There was something Edward had once said to him: “When you sell yourself to Mustang, you end up paying too.”

“Are you just stupid?” Mustang shook his head. “After everything I have done for you two, I can’t—”

“To us,” Alphonse said.

Mustang paused and blinked. “What was that?”

“To us,” Alphonse repeated louder. “You always talk like that, like we owe you something.” It was true: whoever sold themselves to Mustang still ended up paying him in the end. “You didn’t provide for us. You chucked us on a train to God-knows-where and checked in when it was convenient for you—”

“Now, wait just a—”

“Even when you recruited Ed!” Alphonse said, because Mustang had talked and talked and talked. “It wasn’t because you felt sorry for us or because you wanted to help us!” He felt his cheeks flush with anger and then his body warm with heady giddiness at the shock crossing Mustang’s face. “It was all because finding an alchemist like him made you look good! You never looked out for us! You only look out for yourself.” He steadied his breathing. “So now I’m looking out for me, and you can check in when it suits you as you’ve always done.”

Mustang rubbed his jaw. “This isn’t—”

“Don’t insult me,” Alphonse said, “by pretending you care. Not when you’re really just worried I’ll embarrass you.”

Mustang stared at him, and under that dark and angry gaze Alphonse felt himself shrink smaller and smaller until he was microscopic. Until his anger had fled and the only thing he could feel was exhaustion. He had just wanted to—

“Is that all?” Mustang asked, as calm as he had been at the beginning of the automobile ride.

Alphonse, unable to do more, nodded.

“Sir,” Riza said as the automobile slowed.

Mustang turned around. “I see it.” He settled in as Riza pulled the automobile to the curb and parked in front of a fine hotel, the sort with a doorman and valets scrambling to take guest baggage. After a moment, Mustang clapped and touched his door. Once again, the reaction crackled and hummed throughout the vehicle, and the doors unsealed. Still, he did not step out. Instead, he pulled a black folder from the floor in front of him and said, “If you’ve finished, then I’ll just say this.”

Alphonse closed his eyes.

“There are four other four-star generals in this country, and even if you’re in the East and you report to me, any one of them can override my orders. And they won’t just chuck you onto a train; they’ll make sure that train heads straight to the battlefront.” He paused, and when he continued, his voice was tight. “So, maybe you can’t cover more than a few metres right now. You will. You have no idea how easily and quickly the military can make you hone your alchemy. You have no idea the kind of practice arena war makes.”

Alphonse opened his eyes when he heard the click of a latch.

As Mustang stepped onto the pavement, he leaned in and said to Riza, “You have your orders.”

She nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

Mustang did not look at Alphonse as he slammed the door shut and walked away.

As soon as Mustang had disappeared into the hotel, Riza started driving again, though at a much easier speed.

“Alphonse, that was cruel,” she said.

Her words hit him in his chest, and he hunched his shoulders. “It was true.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said. She shook her head. “He cares about you more than you realise.”

He looked out the window at passing pedestrians and shops. He couldn’t see the towers of Central Headquarters. “What are the orders? Are you just supposed to drive around so that I miss the exam?”

Riza said nothing.

“I’ll just jump out the next time you stop,” he said. He wouldn’t be concentrating on keeping his breakfast down or catching his breath, so he would have the time at the next light. “How far are we?”

“About an hour walking,” Riza said.

Alphonse’s stomach sank. Even if he were to hail a cab, he would miss the cutoff. He would be disqualified. He looked at Riza, in her starched uniform and the familiar high-collared black shirt peeking out of her jacket, and his blood heated. “Can you pull over?” he said. “I’m not going to run.”

She did, parking the car in front of a bakery that was advertising a new sort of cake made with a nut called a “pecan.” She turned in her seat and said, “Alphonse, why?”

Though he was annoyed with her for going along with the general’s scheme, there was censure in her voice, and it wilted his anger. He looked at his shoes so he wouldn’t have to look at her frown, at her eyes, at anything that showed her disappointment in him.

“I thought you and Edward had agreed on this years ago,” she said, and her gently admonishing tone hit him hard in the gut. He could withstand Mustang’s bluster and rage, but this was worse. “If this is about what happened in Xing—”

“It’s not!” he cried as a stinging formed behind his eyes. He could tell her, and it would feel good to tell her. She might understand, and the look in her eyes might go away. And he wanted to trust her, wanted to trust that she would protect him, wanted to trust that by telling her he wouldn’t be putting himself in Mustang’s debt. “You…” Edward wouldn’t want him to say in case Mustang heard it. He had his pride. Alphonse thought, though, that he would be able to withstand his wrath. Still, he didn’t want to take the chance. “You can’t tell him.”

“The general?” she asked.

“Ed,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Both?” He folded his hands in his lap and stared at his fingers. “Their bank accounts are all dried up. People can’t pay for automail tune-ups or replacements, so Winry’s been doing it for credit, but she needs to keep ordering parts. So they’ve just been…” Alphonse had seen the ledger. They had goodwill in the community, and if the grocer was letting people purchase on credit then they could eat, but they had little else. “They’ll have to mortgage the house.”

He looked up at Riza. Her mouth was pressed in a thin line and there was a little crease between her brows. Her disapproval had not faded.

“They can’t do that,” Alphonse said as his chest tightened with the need to make her see, to make her be on his side. “Winry’s family has lived there forever. And it was kind of Ed’s idea…” It was a partial truth. He had overheard Edward talking on the telephone after their conversation about the grants, and that had been when Alphonse had first considered the idea of becoming a State Alchemist himself. “I mean, we know how big the grants are and how much of it is just surplus—”

“They’ve overhauled the system, Alphonse,” she said shaking her head. “You have to return the surplus, and they reduce your funding the next year to match. There’s an application process for increase—”

He shrugged. “I can make my research expensive.” All it would take was creative accounting of his materials. If his reports inflated the cost of his laboratory materials—

“Alphonse! That’s a crime!” Riza said.

He almost laughed. “So? Mustang does it all the time!” He didn’t know that for certain, but from what he knew of Mustang’s research, it didn’t require much in the way of resources. He had a guess that Mustang frequently fudged his receipts to put aside money to fund his various personal plots, his spy ring, and his other covert operations. And based on Riza’s silence, his guess was accurate. “And the alternative is possibly losing the house,” he added, “and then where would the kids go?”

Riza ducked her head, and for a moment, Alphonse felt guilty. She had a soft spot for children, as he knew from experience. His time as an ambassador had unfortunately taught him too well how to be a politician.

It was only for a moment, though. “There’s still the salary,” he said.

“The salary is half what it used to be.”

“That’s still more than enough,” Alphonse said.

Riza looked up at him then, and she smiled. “You remind me of him, you know.”

“Ed?” he asked.

“No.” She searched his face, as if she were seeing him but looking for someone else. “The General.”

Alphonse squeezed his hands closed.

“He only wanted to use alchemy for good,” she continued. “He once said that even if his alchemy could only help a few people, if he only played a small part in making the country better, he’d be content.”

Alphonse blinked. Even when they had first met, Mustang had been concerned with desperately clawing his way up the chain of command and becoming Führer. The methods had shifted, but the goal had not. A Roy Mustang with humble ambition was not one with which he was familiar. “What happened to him?”

Riza’s smile faltered. “He became a State Alchemist.”

Alphonse frowned. As far as he was aware, Riza and Mustang had met in Ishval, after Mustang had already made a name for himself. “You knew him before he was a State Alchemist?”

Riza furrowed her brow. “Edward never told you?”

The question knocked into him and sent his head spinning. “Ed never told me what?” He and his brother shared everything.

Riza blinked several times, then she smiled. “Nothing.” She shook her head. “Just that I knew him before.”

All the anger and annoyance that had left him came rushing back, pushing his temperature higher and making his heart hammer against his ribs. He had trusted her, but she did not trust him, at least not in the way she apparently trusted Edward. And Alphonse…When would people stop looking at him and seeing failure personified? Why was he the one people didn’t trust when Roy Mustang was everyone’s hero?

“I’m not like him,” he said. “We’re different people.”

She sighed. “You remind him of himself, too—”

“Just stop!” he cried. His eyelids heated and stung. “I’m not—”

“He is worried about you,” Riza insisted.

“He’s worried I’ll embarrass or inconvenience him,” he said, and he dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “So he’ll do whatever he has to do to get his way, because that’s all that matters to him.”

She reached forward, and he recoiled from her hand. Her breath caught and she said, “Alph—”

“He doesn’t care about other people,” Alphonse said, and somewhere a clock tower sounded, reminding him that his exam should have started and that he would be disqualified because she had gone along with Mustang’s plan. Because neither one of them had trusted him. “He only cares about how useful they are to him! And he thinks I’m useless.”

Riza shook her head and opened her mouth to refute, but Alphonse continued, “And you help him!”

Her eyes widened at that, and she froze.

“You constantly make excuses for him! You let him use you, and then you help him use others.” His chest ached, and he pressed a fist there to try to rub the pain away. “I’m not going to let him use me, but I’m not going to let him think I’m worthless either. Because I’m not. And I don’t care what you or he thinks.”

Riza took a breath and held it, then she said, “If this is about money, he can help. You have people who—”

“I don’t want his help!” Alphonse said. “I don’t want either of your help! I’m not a kid, and I can make my own decisions. I just want to be a person, and not some pawn on Mustang’s chessboard. I get that you don’t trust me, but I don’t need you to protect me either.”

Riza’s expression hardened, as if she had seen through his display of anger and understood the resentment and humiliation growing in him.

His stomach hardened and his throat constricted. He hadn’t meant to say those things to her—or about her. Not really. He just needed to prove that he was capable of something, anything. Passing the State Alchemist exam, using the funds to help his family—he could do those things. He needed Mei to know that. He needed Edward to know that. He needed Riza, Mustang, everyone he loved to know that he could do something right and to trust him to do it.

“Riza,” he said.

She turned around and pulled the gear lever. “You’re right that you’re not a child.” The automobile lurched forward again, and she pulled them onto the street. “Stop behaving like one.”

He did not know how long they drove—thirty minutes, perhaps—but it was long enough for all of his tension and aching to flow from his body and leave behind nothing but numbness and blurring vision. He was fighting so hard to not cry that at first glance he did not recognise the hotel when Riza stopped the automobile in front of it.

When he did notice, he opened the automobile door and, “Riza, I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, her voice even and quiet.

There had to be something he could do to show her that he truly was remorseful, but she had not turned off the engine. She had only parked. “Do you have to go?”

She nodded.

He stepped onto the pavement with a final “I’m sorry,” and he closed the door behind him. 

Through the window, he could see Riza bow her head to rest her forehead on the top of the steering wheel. She took a few breaths, her shoulders rising and falling with each, and then she sat upright and pulled away.

He stood on the pavement, wondering where to go and what to do. He could go up to the hotel room, see Mei and tell her—What? That he hadn’t taken the exam because the two people who had pulled his brother into their world didn’t trust him with the same responsibilities? That he had lashed out at them?

He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and turned to walk down the pavement. He did not know Central well, but he could always ask for directions. For the moment, the pounding of hard concrete under his shoes felt good, the paper boys hawking the daily news—another thick smog had dispelled the West City riots and Richard Kaufman was leading in preliminary election polling—drowned out his thoughts, and he could feel something other than sorry for himself.

It wasn’t until he almost ran into a shorter gentleman in a black jacket that he looked up. Alphonse realised two things in short succession: first, he had managed to walk himself the short distance to Central Headquarters, and second, he had almost plowed down the Führer himself.

Führer Grumman grabbed Alphonse’s upper arm and held him in a firm grip. “Ah, Mr. Elric! I was wondering when you’d show.”

Alphonse’s stomach dropped, and he saw several men in civilian clothes a few paces away. But he had known Riza Hawkeye a long time, and he knew how to tell if a person was wearing a holster under their plainclothes. It was likely that they were standard security, but they made his heart pound. “Führer, Sir,” he began, and then he stopped when he found he had nothing further to add.

“They called me when you didn’t arrive,” the Führer said, and, waving aside the guards and allowing his security to provide any credentials, he started down the wide avenue to the main building. “Come along.”

Alphonse did, but he feared he looked rather foolish with his eyes wide and mouth agape and with his hurrying after such an unusually spry old man. He had spoken to the Chief of Staff the day before when he had called to get his application forced through, but he had never anticipated that Grumman would directly involve himself.

“Did old Mustang take you for a joyride?” the Führer asked with a look over his shoulder.

Alphonse only shrugged. His voice would not come.

“Oh, ho!” Grumman chuckled. “It's a trick he learned from me, I’m afraid.” They reached the entrance, and the Führer opened the front doors and grabbed the first officer he saw—a colonel. “This boy needs to take the State Alchemist exam. Run along and let them know Alphonse Elric is here, and that I eagerly await his results.”

Alphonse wanted to point out that he was too late, that the time had passed and the board would have disqualified him, but the colonel saluted and hurried down a hallway.

“One of those grumpy majors tried to tell me you were too late, but I assured him he had set his watch wrong,” Grumman explained with a wink at Alphonse. “How fortunate that you’ve arrived right on time.”

“I—” Alphonse meant to protest that he was tardy, by a full half hour at least, but he stopped when he saw the flash in Grumman’s eyes. Mustang played games, but if Alphonse’s memory served, Grumman played the same games, and his tactics were far more brutal.

An enlisted soldier with a badge reading “proctor” hurried up to them and bid Alphonse to follow.

Alphonse hesitated. He had trusted a Führer once, and that Führer had abused his trust to betray the nation’s people. Could he trust another? What was Grumman’s interest in him, and why was it at odds with Mustang’s interests?

“Do you have a pen?” the proctor asked.

“Yes,” Alphonse said, deciding that he could always withdraw when he understood more, just as so many had done before him. He patted down the pocket of his waistcoat, but he felt no pen. “I must have dropped it.” It was likely on the floor of that automobile, having fallen out when Riza had taken a particularly sharp turn.

Führer Grumman produced a fountain pen from his own pocket. “You can borrow mine.” As Alphonse took it, he added, “Best of luck, my boy.”

Alphonse stumbled after the proctor and turned once to look behind him. Führer Grumman, surrounded by his plainclothes security detail, watched him go with that coy smile he so often wore. Alphonse wondered how many games he would have to play if he sat for the written exam.

The proctor led him to a small room, which was bare except for a wooden desk, a wooden chair, and a paper booklet. “You’ll have two hours,” the proctor said. “Time will start when the door closes.”

Alphonse nodded. He couldn’t decipher Grumman’s strategy then, not when there was alchemy and theory to do.

The proctor closed the door. Alphonse lowered himself into the desk chair and uncapped the Führer’s pen. How would he return it—it didn’t matter. The exam mattered. He looked over the booklet in front of him.

The first page appeared easy enough. It was just the balancing of alchemical equations. He flipped a few pages forward and read a question about operators of particles in a single dimension. He recalled Edward once turning in some research on the same topic. His brother might have inadvertently written the question.

Alphonse wondered if the proctor knew. Of course, Alphonse did not have an advantage. He had known a vague outline of Edward’s research, but never the details. Edward had always managed to protect his notes through a combination of an unbreakable code and indecipherable handwriting.

He turned back to the front page and raced through the equations, and then he turned to the next problems and began to diagram the hemiacetal intermediates of certain reactions.

* * *

Mustang checked his pocket watch under the table—Hawkeye would be returning soon with answers—while Charlie wrapped up their plans for September and charged ahead into the next month.

“As soon as we’re back in the East,” Charlie said, “we’re going to run. Speeches and public events and—” He stopped and looked at Neumann, who towered over Mustang’s left side. “How many donor meetings do we have set up?”

“Give me a minute,” Neumann said, and he flipped through pages of a calendar. “I’ll get you the exact figure.”

Charlie nodded and tapped his finger on the dark wood table. “Our plan is tout your successes, to dominate the news cycle and stay on top when Parliament passes the new constitution, which we expect sometime in December.”

Mustang nodded. Parliament had been drafting and revising the constitution for years, ever since the dissolution of the military seats had allowed them the power to do so. December seemed a political time to pass it: just after parliament elections so they would see the new party standings heading into the election for Führer, and just before any new MP’s who might want to change up amendments could be sworn in.

Charlie pointed at Roth, who sat to Mustang’s right. “Roth is already preparing two statements for you.”

The half-Ishvalan man leaned in. “If there’s a massive swing away from the current party standings, you’ll be furious that this Parliament disregarded the democratic will of the people by forcing its own constitution through. If things stay more or less the same, you’re giving it your wholehearted support.”

“Right,” Mustang said. “Politics.”

“Eighty-six,” Neumann said. “There are eighty-six donor events scheduled through the end of this year.”

Mustang crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Are there even that many days left in the year?”

“There are,” Brandt assured him from his own seat across the table.

Charlie leaned forward. He had booked a conference room in the hotel, but it was cramped and the table was hardly large enough to contain all the documents they had pored over for the past hour. Mustang was seeing the benefits in Rebecca’s suggestion that he find office space in the city. “We need to break things down by region,” Charlie said. “Right now, people everywhere are nervous. They’re unfamiliar with this new government, so…” He gestured to Mustang. “You’ve been criticised as representing the old government, but we can work that to our advantage. We can talk about gradual change—”

Mustang held up a hand to stop him. They had discussed it all before, but hadn’t he been working for most of his life to establish a democratic government? Hadn’t he plotted a coup for that very purpose? It was true that he had intentionally misled the people about the purposes of that coup and the outcomes, but to stand on a stage representing the stratocracy he had committed to dismantling seemed even more disingenuous. “I don’t want to represent the old government,” he said. “I’ve been working for years for this.”

“And yet,” Charlie said, “you walked in here wearing a military uniform.”

Mustang thought it wasn’t the most fair note. He worked for the military, and wearing the uniform was part of his job, but that didn’t mean he wanted to pull the military back into the political arena only to push it out again after he won. Surely, that would look worse.

“We can balance,” Charlie said. “Change and stability at the same time.” He flipped open a notepad and grabbed a pen from under a stack of papers. “Right now our big word in the East is ‘reconstruction.’ Let’s come up with more words like that. Words that mean moving onto something new but imply a return to stability. ‘Re-’ words. I don’t want your stump speeches to get stale.” He looked at Roth. “No offence.”

Roth grunted.

Charlie tapped his pen on the pad. “So? ‘Renew. Revitalise.’” He wrote both down.

“‘Revitalise’ is good for the West,” Roth said.

Mustang heard Neumann next to him muttering “re, re, re” and drumming his fingers on the table.

“What else?” Charlie asked. He glared at the team as Roth folded his arms and looked up at the ceiling and Kuhn, ever silent, shrunk in his chair in the corner. “Am I the only one working on this campaign?”

“‘Reconcile,’” Roth said. “We could tie it to the railroad, to the armistice in the North—”

“Armstrong will love my taking credit for that,” Mustang said, because he could envision her rage, could feel her soldiers covering his body under tonnes of concrete, all while wondering aloud how General Mustang had disappeared.

“So we focus on your biggest successes,” Charlie said while Roth took the pad from him and began to write. “Ishval’s growth and, as Roth said, the railroad.”

“Which has a blockade,” Mustang said. A place of conflict could not be counted as a success. In fact, everything he had set up between Amestris and Xing had begun to fail.

“Reform,” Roth muttered as he wrote. “Reclaim, rekindle, renovate….”

“The blockade went up after Parliament effectively stripped your position of any governing and international negotiating power,” Charlie said, and Brandt nodded. “We can make that Kaufman’s fault.”

“He’s still the man to beat,” Brandt said.

Mustang hummed. Kaufman was a convenient scapegoat. He was a Member of Parliament, one of the people who had voted to reduce the governing powers of generals, and while Mustang did see the benefit of such a move, it was a great inconvenience to him. If there was one thing in campaigning Mustang knew well, it was spinning stories. Still, he imagined Kaufman was sitting in a room—larger than theirs, maybe—and discussing with his own team how to spin the same problems against Mustang.

“‘Regenerate,’” Neumann suggested, and Roth shrugged and wrote the word down.

“We’re not going to win big in the West,” Charlie said. “That’s Kaufman’s region, and his support there is strong. We’d do better to focus our energies on other regions.” He flipped through stacks of newspapers. “Every region has problems to fix, but Central…It’ll be tough.”

“They’re stable,” Mustang said. Even with General Maden’s support, the West would be a hard fight. He could count on General Armstrong’s support in the North, most likely, and he thought that perhaps his efforts in building relationships with Aerugo would counter any lack of support from General Fischer. Central was another matter. “They’re reaping the rewards of every other region’s industry and rural efforts.”

Charlie drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “People here might get worried if all they hear is how you’re planning to fix all other regions at the expense of their own prosperity.”

“Especially now that Hauser’s running,” Neumann said.

Mustang agreed. “That is an unfortunate development.” It was remarkable how little Neumann annoyed him when Hawkeye was out of the room—though he was still taller than any man should be, and that was irksome.

Charlie crossed his arms on the table and furrowed his brow. “What did you say?”

“It’s unfortunate,” Mustang repeated.

Charlie shook his head. “Hauser?”

“General Hauser,” Mustang said, as if there were any other who was well-known enough to be referred to by surname alone.

Charlie looked at Brandt, who shook his head, then at Kuhn, who looked as if he wanted to disappear entirely, and then at Roth, who held up both hands in innocence. Then he looked between Mustang and Neumann. “Both of you knew this? And said nothing?”

Mustang pulled his shoulders back, because it wasn’t his fault if Charlie had missed the announcement in any of the newspapers. “He was going to announce his bid before the end of the week.” At the same time, Neumann pointed to Charlie and said, “Weren’t you the one who told me about this?”

“Stop,” Charlie said, and he ran a hand down his face. He let the silence hang until it stretched thin, like a garrotte. Finally, he said, “Hauser is nothing. His approval rating is low. He might take Central, but even here people think he’s hot air.” He jabbed a finger into the tabletop. “But the next time anyone knows something, even if you think I already know, tell me.” He looked at each man in the room in turn, moving on only once they had each nodded in agreement.

Charlie then leaned back in his chair. “Alright. Aside from slogans and writing new stump speeches, does anyone have an idea about how to tackle Central?” He checked his wristwatch. “We have a few minutes left before management comes to kick us out.”

“I’m from Central,” Mustang said. “I was born and raised here. I went to the Academy here, and I was stationed here until…” He trailed off as Roth shifted beside him, and he chose his next words with care. “Until I was deployed and then assigned to East City.”

“Which means,” Brandt said, “that you’ve effectively lived half your life not in Central.”

“Roots are still important,” Roth said, and he wrote something else down on the pad. “I can work with that.”

Mustang took a deep breath. There was always Rebecca’s suggestion. “Someone mentioned setting up a campaign office here.”

Charlie considered with a frown. “It would be good to have a set-up here, monitoring public opinion constantly.”

“Telephone banks!” Kuhn squeaked from his corner for the first time in an hour. “Volunteer events. It’ll be easy to distribute pamphlets.”

Roth tapped his pen against the notepad. “It suggests a permanent commitment to the city. A return or a…” He snapped his fingers. “Reunion!”

Charlie looked at Brandt. “Can we afford it?”

Brandt grunted and scanned an accounts ledger. “It’s possible.”

“I’ll set up more donor meetings,” Neumann said, and Mustang wrinkled his nose. There were already eighty-six on the calendar, and surely there were other things he could do with his time to further the campaign. “We can fill up the treasury so we don’t take as big of a financial hit on other things.”

“Great,” Charlie said.

“Rejuvenate?” Kuhn said as he scooted closer to the table.

Brandt shook his head. “That makes us sound like a bathhouse.”

Roth shrugged. “I’m writing it down.”

Kuhn beamed.

A knock sounded at the door, signalling the end of their allotted time in the rented space.

“Roth,” Charlie said as everyone shuffled papers into bags and briefcases. “Start working on a new stump speech, and get me something for Central by the end of tomorrow. I want to be able to use it while we’re here.”

“Roots, renewal, reunion,” Roth said. “I’ve got it.” Then he left.

“Neumann,” Charlie said. “Schedule as many meetings with potential donors as you can. Kuhn, go find me some office space, preferably somewhere you can scrounge up volunteers.” Then, when Neumann and Kuhn had gone, he said, “Brandt, go with Kuhn. And get me the figures.”

Brandt’s massive form pushed the door open wide, and Mustang saw Hawkeye waiting in the hall. She nodded once at him, and he gathered his things into a black leather portfolio. He had more pressing concerns than an election that was more than a year away.

“We’ll need a telephone supervisor for Central,” Charlie said to himself as he stacked pages and shoved them into a brown case. “And I’ll need to hire staffers…” He sighed and looked at Mustang. “That’s all I have for you. Do you need anything?”

Mustang looked through the open doorway and saw Hawkeye speaking with Neumann. His temperature rose, and he said, “I trust you.”

Charlie turned to see where Mustang was looking, where Hawkeye waved farewell to Neumann. She leaned against the wall and brushed her hair behind her ear. “Sure,” he said with little conviction.

As Mustang left the small conference room, a lobby boy stepped past him and asked Charlie if he could help him clear away anything. 

Mustang approached Hawkeye and said, “Change into civilian clothes and join me for lunch?”

She frowned and lifted an eyebrow, and he felt her disapproval.

“Oh, bring Rebecca along,” he said. “If that makes you feel better about it.”

It did seem to make her feel better about it, for ten minutes later he sat at a table laid for three in the café adjoining the lobby. It was a pretty place, with red back floors,glass walls and a glass roof. Potted plants sat in every space unoccupied by a table or a chair. He had changed out of his uniform and into black trousers and a matching waistcoat, and he waited for the women to arrive.

When Hawkeye and Rebecca entered, Rebecca was picking at the sleeve of Hawkeye’s grey cardigan, and Hawkeye slapped her hand away, but they were both smiling at some private joke.

As they sat waiting for their food, he thought that he had by chance struck the perfect balance between his reputation and irreproachability. For there he was with a beautiful woman on either side of him, and yet both of them were entirely unavailable to him; one was his adjutant, the other married and a former colleague. It was a picture that suited his former licentious image yet held such little suspicion as to fit with the more chaste image his campaign required of him.

Rebecca excused herself when their drinks arrived, and while Hawkeye poured herself a cup of tea, he said, “Well?”

She wrapped her hands around the warming porcelain. “It’s about finances. From what I understand, Edward and Winry have been providing free medical care and automail.”

He swirled his gin and tonic. “That’s stupid.” Given the expense of automail, the young couple would soon be bankrupt, if they weren’t already. Still, he had once met the Rockbell doctors before their untimely death on the battlefield, and he was not surprised to learn that their daughter would extend treatment to those who could not pay.

Then he frowned. There was something that had crossed his desk several weeks earlier, something he had signed off on without reading it too closely. Of course, if he admitted as much to Hawkeye he would never hear the end of it, but if he could just suggest what he needed to know, she would supply the rest. “There’s a new program for training military doctors. The one with the annual stipend.”

Hawkeye was not so easily fooled. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he looked up at the glass ceiling and sighed. Then he looked back at her, and she clicked her tongue and nodded. “I can find out more, Sir.” She bent to the side and pulled a bound packet of papers from the bag at her feet. “Sir, I’ve been wanting to speak with you about something.” She slid the packet across the table.

He read the bolded title at the top of the cover page. “Legislation Concerning the Appointment and Duties of the Minister to the Führer.” He swallowed and tried to roll away the sudden tightness in his neck and shoulders.

“Vogel gave it to me,” she explained.

He thumbed through the first few pages and refused to look at her. “I thought I was supposed to pick my staff.” He had meant to play it off as a joke—she had picked his housekeeper and his house, after all—but it came out harsher than he had intended.

Hawkeye picked up her teacup off her saucer. “Is your list of candidates for the position very long?”

He did look at her then, at her perfect poise and grace with which she held her teacup and cast her eyes downward before replacing the cup and meeting his gaze. “No,” he admitted. There was no one else he considered quite so capable or trustworthy. He had no doubt that the pages contained a lengthy description of tasks and expectations that matched her current job description, and an equally lengthy description of tasks and expectations that did not. He also had no doubt that she would rise to meet each of them. “I just thought…” He looked back down at the cover page.

“What did you think?” she whispered. “That I would stay in the military and take a command while you continued to dismantle the stratocracy and push the military further from government power?” She leaned in, and he could almost smell citrus and carnauba wax, a scent that frustrated and intoxicated and haunted him all at once. “That I’d let you push me to a place where I can’t help you build up our nation’s democracy and reform everything we’ve done?” She rested her hand on the packet, their hands so close he could flex his fingers and grab hers if he dared to do so in such a public place. “This is my goal, too.”

His chest tightened. “I know.”

“And I swore I’d follow you wherever you went.” Hawkeye pulled her hand back. “And I know the Führer’s residence is a long way from hell, but…”

She was still coming. “Are you officially turning down the promotion, then?” he asked.

She nodded, “Yes, Sir.”

He folded his arms across his chest and looked across the room at several other couples who sat for lunch. He knew that he would have to run for Führer while a bachelor. He had always supposed that marriage would come later, when the fraternisation legislation or the appearance of cronyism no longer mattered. But she had reintroduced those boundaries. She had reintroduced the idea that he could be the Führer or he could have her, not both. Never both. Those damn rules would govern him for the rest of his life.

He looked back at her as she watched him, waiting for a response. “You know what I thought,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, Sir.” Then, instead of appearing to bear the same conflicting emotions he did, she smiled and picked up her cup again. “Read the legislation, Sir.”

Rebecca chose that moment to reinsert herself at their table, and though he knew she spied the packet as he tucked it away, she instead launched into a speech about some heiress whom he should know and whom she had just seen checking into the lobby.

The name did not matter. Nothing mattered to him then except for that horrid packet of rules burning through his waistcoat pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes and worldbuilding things are live and can be found on my [Tumblr](dyannehs.tumblr.com) under the sidebar button ["I Am My Own Fandom"](https://dyannehs.tumblr.com/i-am-my-own-fandom). If there's something you want to know, you can shoot me an ask there or leave it in a comment here. But that's where I'll be answering all questions and just generally writing about...things.
> 
> See you guys in two weeks.


	14. Chapter 14

Mustang flexed and curled his fingers. He had done radio spots before, but this would be his first since the announcement of his campaign. He knew from experience that radio was less forgiving than print: print could be edited, cut, moved around, and delayed, as his week-old newspaper interview with _The Central Times_ had been. The radio was instantaneous and immutable.__

_ __ _

_ __ _

Roth stood in one corner of the waiting room and gesticulated while speaking with a harried station worker. As Press Secretary, it was Roth’s job to prepare Mustang’s remarks, to prepare him for interviews, and then appear on the same radio channel after Mustang had finished his interview and tell the remaining listeners just how supremely well Mustang had done. Every few moments he turned and gestured to Mustang before resuming his conversation.

Hawkeye wasn’t with him. She was at Central Headquarters, having agreed to help Lieutenant Denny Brosh with training a new group of graduates in sniping. He would feel better if she were standing outside the door. She was calming.

Not that he was nervous. He didn’t get nervous.

Charlie dropped into one of the cheap, velveteen-covered chairs next to him and handed him a newspaper. “Have you read it yet?” 

Mustang held up the paper with and scanned the front page. The article began above the fold and continued below it: an exposé on General Roy Mustang. It was his interview. 

Mustang hadn’t heard anything about that newspaper interview since he had given it a week ago. Mustang had anticipated Charlie would speak to him about any earned press [the same day], even if he were displeased with the outcome. Even Hawkeye hadn’t mentioned it, and she would have if she had read it. He noted the date at the top of the page: Charlie had handed him the current day’s paper.

“It’s good,” Charlie said as if nothing were amiss and he had fully anticipated a later printing. “Roth agrees that the part about dating is a little transparent.” 

Mustang looked down at that bit, at the interviewer’s question in bold and his own response below. “Well, the alternative was unthinkable to the rest of the team.” He had admitted there was a woman, but to preserve her privacy, he would not say more. She knew who she was, and that was all that mattered. He and Charlie and Roth had deliberated on and scripted the response before the interview. It was an answer that was meant to have reporters and the public asking questions for days. Judging by the date above the newspaper title, however, the public could have only been theorising for a few hours.

“Miss Hall is going to come back to it today,” Charlie said.

“I’m sure,” Mustang said. Somehow the topic of his personal life had eclipsed his policies, and he would have to bring the conversation back to his platform. He looked back at the article. His team had made it clear that he needed to do the interview early, to match and then surpass Kaufman’s print mentions by maintaining a media presence. He should have heard if the printing had been delayed. “We did this interview over a week ago,” he said.

Charlie shrugged. “Roth’s idea.”

Mustang frowned and furrowed his brow.

Charlie sighed and leaned back in the chair. “They were going to push you below the fold. Or worse: to page two.” He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “They got some psychologist to comment on the whole radio debacle, and that was apparently more newsworthy.” 

Mustang stared at the wall. How odd it was that Hawkeye had been investigating a psychologist—his housekeeper’s son, no less—for much the same reason. He didn’t believe in coincidence.

“So Roth negotiated with them to delay until today. People read it this morning over breakfast, tune into the radio at midday, and suddenly you’re all anyone talks about for the rest of the week.” 

Roth pulled away from the station worker and crossed the room. “Bad news,” he said. “Eileen Bridges is back.” 

“No,” Charlie said, and Roth nodded. Charlie ran a hand down his face. “No, no, no. She’s supposed to be on her honeymoon.” 

“I know!” Roth said. “Why do you think Neumann and I booked this for today? She came back early.” 

Mustang folded his arms while Charlie swore under his breath. Eileen Bridges—at least, that was her maiden name—was the station’s usual primetime host, but Mustang had been told a Miss Hall would be covering for her during his interview, which Charlie had told him was good for a reason he couldn’t quite recall. “How much worse can this possibly be?” 

Charlie scoffed. “She has managed to sink five Parliamentary careers in the past three years. She is unmatched in sniffing out scandals.” 

Roth held up his hands. “It could be fine. We’re not hiding any scandals.” 

Charlie sighed and squeezed his eyes closed while Mustang rolled his head from side to side. There was the coup he had plotted to overthrow the government eight years earlier. He had been an active participant in the plot to kill the last Führer. Roth knew about those things, of course, but those stories had been told, and any versions that leaned closer to the truth would be written off as conspiracy theories. There were still many things Mustang had never told him. Mustang knew the current Führer was ill enough to be declared unfit for office. That same Führer was acquainted with Mustang’s aunt and foster mother, who ran a spy ring of prostitutes that kept him informed of military and government plans he had no legal business knowing. He had a less-than-appropriate relationship with his adjutant, who happened to be the Führer’s long-lost grandchild, which made Mustang’s appointments and career ascension smack more than slightly of cronyism from an outside perspective.

“Right?” Roth asked.

Other than those things, he wasn’t hiding any scandals.

Roth took a deep breath. “Please tell me I won’t have to rewrite my spin remarks for the second hour.” 

Charlie grabbed the newspaper and scanned the front page. “Listen to me,” he said, and then he jabbed his finger next to the question about Mustang’s romantic life. “If she mentions anything about this, get off of it. Immediately.” 

Roth rubbed at his mouth. “Do I need to know about any affairs?” 

“There’s no affair,” Mustang said because there wasn’t. He stood and crossed to the other side of the room where a low table held several back issues of the Central Times.

“Stick to the platform,” Charlie continued. “The talking points, the—” 

“I understand,” Mustang said. They had gone over the same strategy to the point of annoyance. He would rather flip through old issues of the newspaper and discover which psychologist had weighed in on the radio hijacking.

“General!” a voice boomed from the waiting room door, and Mustang turned to see Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong striding toward him with a deep frown etched across his face.

Mustang sighed. “What now?” It was one thing after another in recent days, and he was ready for someone to approach him with good news.

To his dismay, Armstrong reached him, leaned in, and whispered, “Alphonse Elric passed his written exam.” 

Mustang jerked away. “That’s not possible.” He had given Hawkeye direct orders, and he couldn’t imagine her defying them.

“I’ve been informed,” Armstrong said, his voice still low enough that Roth and Charlie, quietly bickering to their side, could not hear, “that the Führer himself escorted the boy and ensured he took it, even though he was almost an hour late.” 

The news knocked into Mustang’s chest and stole his breath. “The Führer…” So Grumman had been well enough to leave the residence, not that Armstrong would know the difference between a well and unwell Grumman’s habits. Not only had Grumman been well enough to leave, but his first move had been to push Alphonse toward becoming a State Alchemist. And Grumman had his own eyes everywhere—he was the one who had taught Mustang everything about managing a spy network, and their networks often overlapped—and he would have known that Mustang tried to block Alphonse from taking the exam. 

So, instead of contacting Mustang after his countless telephone calls and his attempt to visit, he had chosen to work in direct opposition to him.

His fingers stiffened, and he held his arms behind his back to hide his hands while he worked the muscles. 

It wasn’t the first time their interests had collided. Grumman had been too eager to let suspicion and blame fall on Mustang in those early days of confusion following the Promised Day, before the careful lies had been printed and the story solidified in the minds of the people, and he had been happy to let such suspicion and blame and confusion launch him into the Führer’s seat while Mustang dealt with the aftermath and resigned himself to waiting. There was an art to scheming, and Grumman had been a masterful teacher.

Mustang swallowed and continued to work at his locked joints. Before he could think of a response, the studio door flew open and a woman with blonde, wavy hair and a wide, bright smile that cut into her cheeks said, “Hello!” 

She marched into the room, her heels thudding against the linoleum, and she reached for Charlie’s hand first. “Eileen Bridges,” she said as she switched to Roth. “How do you do?” 

Roth smiled back at her. “Isaac Roth. We heard you were on your honeymoon.” 

Eileen tossed her hair and laughed, a high, merry sound that scraped along the top of Mustang’s scalp. “Oh, yes. But the world knows me by ‘Bridges,’ so we’re sticking with that.” She turned her attention to Mustang.

“I meant that you shouldn’t have had to cut it short,” Roth said. “Such a shame.” 

She wedged herself between Armstrong and Mustang with an impressive measure of force and confidence. “Oh, please. I heard Maureen was getting General Mustang here,” she said, and she grabbed Mustang’s elbow. “And I wouldn’t have it, I tell you.” Her grip tightened as she looked over her shoulder at Roth. “I told my husband I wasn’t letting this one go by.” She looked back at Mustang with that sharp smile. “Well,” she said, and she looked him up and down.

“Your picture in the paper certainly doesn’t do you justice,” she said.

Under any other circumstance, he would be flattered and prepared to flirt, but the gaze was scrutinising, as if she weren’t appraising what she liked but rather hunting for loose threads in his coat.

He gave her his best Roy Mustang smile.

She released his elbow and said, “Have you read it yet? Not that you need to. You’re the one who gave the interview!” Then she laughed again and turned toward the studio door. “Come on,” she said. “We’re starting in a few minutes, so let’s get situated.” She left through the doorway without looking back.

Charlie shrugged, and Mustang nodded to Armstrong before he and his campaign team members moved to follow. 

A station worker held up a hand after Mustang passed by. “Only staff and guests past here, Sirs.” 

Mustang looked back at Charlie and at Roth, who said, “But I am a guest. I’m going to be—” The door closed.

He looked down the dark hall where Eileen stood, one hand on her hip and that smile still plastered to her face. His hands still ached, his fingers were still locked and curled. His shoulders were tight, and the hair on the back of his neck rose. He hadn’t felt such a desire to run in years, not since he had mistakenly trusted General Raven, who had led him into a room full of the government’s leaders plotting their nation’s destruction.

That threat was long gone, though, so he took a step forward and said, “You know, I’ve always believed that love and happiness make a woman lovelier.” 

Eileen tossed her head back and laughed. “Oh!” She wagged a finger at him. “I prepared for this, you know. Your reputation precedes you.” When he reached her, she turned and led him down a hallway, past glass windows revealing marketing teams and actors and singers rehearsing their advertisement spots. “Clever little stunt in the paper, there,” she said. “Was it your aim to make it sound like it could be any woman in the East?” 

It had been his aim, but he said, “Reputations are only half-truths.” 

She hummed. “Well, my skill set is getting whole truths.” She pushed through a door labelled “green room” and opened a cupboard filled with glasses. “I wrote my first article on you, you know. Back when I was a university student.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “It was just in the university paper, so I doubt you would have read it.” 

His thumb jumped, and he worked at his hand behind his back, from the palm to the tips of his fingers and back, just as Hawkeye would have done. “Is that right?” It was likely he had missed it. He doubted anyone in Eastern Headquarters had ever brought him a university paper, and if they had, he certainly would not have read it. “What was it on?” 

Eileen leaned against the lower cupboard and shrugged. “It was back when you had just recommended Edward Elric to be a State Alchemist. Everyone was calling you crazy, reckless, even delusional, for recruiting a child.” 

He remembered. While in hindsight, it was one of his best decisions, the recommendation had been controversial at the time, especially with a public that was growing more anti-military by the day. “What did you call me?” 

Her smile seemed to grow and darken, the grin of a wolf about to bite. “Morally reprehensible.” Before he could respond, she turned away again and grabbed two glass tumblers. “They explained to you how this will work, right? Tiny room, two chairs.” She filled each glass from a pitcher of water on the countertop and set them on a tray. Then she looked back at Mustang. “Oh, you’ve had radio spots before.” She used her toe to slide open a lower cupboard and reveal shelves stocked with bottles of gin, clear Drachman vodka, and dark Cretan whisky. “Drink?” 

The door behind them opened, and a lean intern told them they would be live in five minutes. Eileen waved the boy into the room.

“I’ve never done a spot with a bar,” Mustang said. A drink would be nice; it would calm the muscles in his hands; it would mute his thoughts about Grumman and Alphonse. It would alleviate the feeling that he was about to be devoured.

“Jimmy,” Eileen said as she walked to Mustang and handed him a glass of water. “Would you be a dear and get me a gin and tonic, and…” She looked at Mustang.

One drink. He could handle one drink. “Same,” he said, “but make it a double and hold the tonic.” 

Eileen laughed again and led him from the room and into the neighbouring recording room. “You’re funny,” she said. “That’s good. Funny sells.” She sat in one of the chairs at a table covered in a black tablecloth and gestured to the chair opposite her. There was a silver microphone in front of each chair, and the microphones connected to a wooden box with a red light bulb in the centre of the table. From that ran dozens of wires.

Mustang sat in his chair and smiled as he set his glass on the table. Hawkeye wouldn’t have thought his comment funny. She would have rolled her eyes and shook her head and quietly told him he didn’t need a drink before noon, Sir.

“I heard you’re doing some film promotions with Marcus Braugher next week,” Eileen said before she took a sip and set her own water down.

He took a deep breath. “Yes, I—” 

“Good luck with that,” she said. She waved a hand before he could speak. “Braugher is infamous in the West, you know. He once called Emmie Goldstein ‘the short one with blonde curls.’” She leaned forward and repeated, “Emmie Goldstein! Can you believe it?” Then she sat back in her chair and, with that wolfish smile, said, “Of course, you know Emmie.” 

He did know Emmie Goldstein. He had enjoyed the pleasure of the actress’s company on several occasions, and rumours had flown about the nature of their relationship for a brief time. He had given the press the same answer he always gave about such rumours, regardless of their veracity: She was a lovely woman, and nothing indecorous had happened. “We’ve met.” 

“Oh, there’s no need to be coy,” Eileen said as the studio door opened and the intern appeared with two glasses. “Thank you, Jimmy.” 

Mustang took his drink and knocked back half of it. The alcohol burned in his throat, and warmth bloomed in his chest.

Eileen watched him from over the top of her drink. “Are you alright?” 

He smiled back at her. “Fine.” 

There was a window just above the table, and through it, one of the studio technicians waved at Eileen.

She pointed to the little, red light bulb. “It’ll flash red twice and then stay lit, and we’ll be live.” 

He nodded. He was not new to the process.

Eileen smiled. “Ready?”

Mustang smiled back. Calm hummed through his veins, releasing his fingers and washing over his mind. She had him in her territory, and, if she and his campaign team were to be believed, she excelled at asking the right questions. Unfortunately for her, he excelled at giving the right answers. He wouldn’t have become the man in that room if he hadn’t possessed that skill. “Ready.” 

The light blinked once.

Eileen shifted under his gaze, and her smile faltered, but only for a moment.

The light blinked twice.

She moved her face close to the silver microphone, and he followed.

The light stayed bright red.

“Good afternoon, Central,” she said without breaking eye contact. “I’m Eileen Bridges, and it is so good to be back! I’m joined today by a very special guest, General Roy Mustang, who just kicked off his bid for Führer last month.” Her radio voice was low and breathy, a complete contrast to her normal speaking voice. “General, we’re delighted to have you on the show.” 

He had no radio voice, and Charlie had assured him it was a good thing. Authenticity was what people wanted. “Eileen, I’m delighted to be here. I was born and raised in this city, so I’m glad to be back. It feels like coming home.” 

Eileen leaned her elbows on the table and said, “Now our regular listeners know I despise opening pleasantries, and with the newspaper article this morning, there’s no need for introductions. Listeners, if you haven’t read the interview with General Mustang, I encourage you to do it after this. And believe me, you’ll want to.” 

He narrowed his eyes and pondered whether or not there was a threat in those words. Charlie had told him to be agreeable, which was an unnecessary reminder, and to stick to policy. “I’d rather skip the small talk, as well.” 

Eileen produced a pad of paper from under the tablecloth. “Then let’s talk about the election. A far more interesting topic for both of us, I’m sure.” 

“Certainly,” he agreed.

“Now,” Eileen said as she looked down at her first page, “I’m sure you’re aware, but some of our listeners at home might not be. If this popular election sees a voter turnout of less than fifty percent of the national population, the vote goes to Parliament.” 

Mustang nodded. “That’s correct.” It was one of the many concessions Grumman had made in securing a popular election when Parliament had wanted to keep the electoral process to themselves.

Eileen smiled. “Are you concerned about that?” 

“No, absolutely not.” Charlie was confident that the right numbers would show, and he was confident they would show for Mustang.

She looked back at her paper. “I only ask because, in a recent poll, thirty-four percent of participants said they were not planning to vote, twenty-one percent said they were planning to vote, and the other forty-five were undecided.” She looked back up at him. “Those are not exciting numbers.” 

Mustang chuckled. “No,” he said. “They definitely aren’t.” He leaned forward to mimic her posture. “I think it’s important to remember that it’s still early, and we’re at a point in our nation’s history when everything is changing. At points of great change, there’s always a desire for stability. People will want a leader who has always been leading and can bring the nation forward without sacrificing feelings of safety.” He looked down at the microphone and thought of Hawkeye, who would be brimming with excitement over the emergence of democracy. “This has never been attempted before in our nation’s history. People are used to being told who their Führer will be, that their Parliament is powerless, that their voices don’t matter. But they do.” 

Eileen lifted her chin.

“Part of our goal,” he said, “is encouraging that forty-five percent to go and vote, no matter whom they vote for. Because democracy can and will work, but it works best when everyone is involved.” He flexed his fingers. “We still have a year to go, and I think in time we’ll see that gap close in favour of democracy.” He shrugged and grinned at Eileen. There was a third point Charlie and Roth had drilled into him in private: use every opportunity to present himself as the democratic option, as the only democratic option, and Kaufman as the opposite. “But at the end of the day, I think people, in general, would rather choose for themselves than have another group make a choice they don’t want on their behalf.” 

Eileen pursed her lips and nodded. “And let’s say we get there. Fifty percent show up. What are you going to do to grow that lack of faith in a democratic system?” 

“I’m committed to working with our Parliament and regional governments to ensure that this new world we’re entering adapts to the needs of the people.” He straightened, the alcohol and his familiarity with his points filling him with a renewed vigour. “What people will see in my first year is a government that responds to the will of the people, not to its own will. And that—proving that a completely democratically elected government can be effective—is what will increase trust in the democratic system.” He smiled and rattled off the stump speech tag Roth had come up with that morning. “A restructuring of the Amestrian government will result in a revitalisation of the Amestrian spirit.” 

Eileen blinked several times, and her smile softened. “You obviously have a vision for Amestris’s future. Can you briefly explain that future and the key things you will do to bring it about?” 

He did have a vision. He always had. “Right now we’re still in recovery from decades of violence, both at and within our borders. A state at constant war cannot thrive, and neither can the people.” He swallowed as he remembered, for the first time in a long time, that naïve dream he had confessed to Hawkeye at her father’s graveside. “I have always envisioned a future where every citizen is safe. Safe to dream, safe to succeed. And one of the most important things I can do to make that happen is appoint advisors and Ministers with similar visions.” Like Hawkeye, who, to his chagrin, seemed more and more suited to be Minister to the Führer the longer he considered it. “I would listen to the people’s concerns and put efforts into growing their prosperity and security, as I have done in the East for fifteen years.” 

Eileen hummed and dropped her eyes, and then she leaned into her microphone and said, “Central, we’re only a few questions in, and there are more to come, but for now we’re going to go to a message from our sponsors.” She looked at the lightbulb until it went dark, and then she pointed at someone through the window.

Mustang knocked back the remainder of his drink. It was unfortunate that the person best suited to advise him was someone he would rather have in an entirely different position—several different positions, the gin-loosened voice in his mind whispered, and he shook his head to banish the thought.

The door opened, and Eileen gestured to their glasses as she picked up her drink. “Another round,” she said. She sipped for a moment while the door shut again, and then she put her drink next to her water and said, “Either you mean all of that, or you could star in pictures.”  
Mustang chuckled. “There’s only one way to find out if I mean it.” 

For the first time in their acquaintance, Eileen did not smile. Instead, she watched him with a pensiveness he had not anticipated. “Yes,” she finally said. “I suppose that’s true.” 

* * *

Havoc twirled a pen around his thumb as he listened to the interview. Feury crouched over the radio as if he could fix anything wrong General Mustang said by adjusting a few wires. There wasn’t a cause for concern.

“He’s doing well,” Breda said from his desk. He had spent the majority of the morning cleaning his desk drawers and refiling folders he had long ago “borrowed” from the archives.

“No kidding,” Havoc said. Mustang had always had a knack for wooing women and the public. In the end, though, it hadn’t done him much good. The general was single, and Havoc was the one who married the cute, red-haired nurse. Havoc was the one with a baby on the way.

“They say it’s lonely at the top,” the radio lady said after the last advertisement ended. “That even if you’re surrounded by friends and family, none of them can really understand what it means to run a country.” 

It was a station that reached all regions, but Havoc had never bothered with it much. Most of the news had focused on Central, and his entire life was in the East.

“Does this isolation scare you?” the lady asked. “Do you have the courage to be lonely?” 

“That’s an interesting question,” Breda said.

“You’ve said that about every question,” Havoc snorted.

Feury shushed them as the general’s voice came through the radio again, “I’m a man at the top of my military career. There are five four-star generals allowed by the current constitution and five alone who understand what it means to make military decisions that affect our national security. When Parliament allows us to, of course.” 

The lady laughed. “Of course.”

Breda puffed his cheeks and blew. “And that’s how you criticise an opponent.” 

“But are we really surprised?” Havoc said. The general had traded in secrets and insults for so long.

“—Laws preventing me from confiding in—even having friendships with the people under my command,” Mustang continued. “All that to say, I’ve been in a similarly isolated position for years. It doesn’t scare me at all.” 

Breda walked across the room and dropped into Hawkeye’s seat across from Havoc. “How’s Mellie?” 

“Good,” Havoc said, his shoulders stiffening and his legs aching. He hadn’t told the office, not even Breda, about the baby, even though Mellie was starting to show. “She’s good.” The first few months had been so difficult, and they had been so sure they would lose the child on multiple occasions, so he had been quiet. Poor, poor Jean Havoc, they would say. He can’t walk correctly, and he can’t be a father.

And even though the doctor said they were out of danger and that the baby would likely survive to term, it seemed almost too late. As if he had kept a secret for so long that his reluctance was humiliating.

“But we’ve all read the interview by now,” the interviewer continued. “And according to that, you may not have to be isolated forever..” 

Breda rolled his eyes. “Here it comes.” 

Feury leaned back in his chair. “Why is the whole election hinging on this?” he asked while the general chuckled and said, “Ah. That.” 

“We all know there is a special woman in your life,” the lady said.

Havoc could imagine Mustang shifting in his seat, moving from a relaxed posture to plant his feet on the floor. “Be that as it may, I’m not thinking about matrimony at the moment. I’m more—” 

“Why not?”

Havoc looked at Breda, who was already exhausted by the question and leaned back in Hawkeye’s seat with his eyes closed.

“It’s just not possible,” Mustang said. “I’m focusing on the future of the country first.” 

Havoc thought it a satisfactory answer. Perhaps it was because he had been sitting across from the answer to the interviewer’s question for years, but he preferred the conversation about policies. It was idealism that had first pulled him into Mustang’s orbit, not the constant media attention around Mustang’s relationships.

The radio lady would not be deterred. “Plenty of people can balance government work and married life. Richard Kaufman, for example.” 

Breda opened his eyes and rubbed his chin. “She’s baiting him.” 

“And you,” she continued. “You’re single, attractive, well-off, intelligent—” 

Havoc snorted. “Oh, he’ll be loving that.” 

“What could possibly be in the way?” she asked.

“It can’t—” Mustang began. “We chose the wrong lives.” 

Havoc frowned. He thought, just for a moment, that he had heard a slight lisp in the general’s voice, like the one he sometimes had after a few—That was impossible, though. Hawkeye wouldn’t allow it.

Feury looked across the room at Havoc and Breda. “You heard it, right?” 

Breda stared at the top of Hawkeye’s desk. “‘Chose the wrong lives.’” He looked at Havoc. “That’s already too much information.” 

“He’s slurring,” Feury said.

“He’s lost the thread,” Breda agreed quietly while Havoc’s stomach sank. “Depending on how the next few minutes go, the next time we’re all in the same room might be before the Judiciary Corps.” 

“Can you tell us more about that?” the lady asked.

“Everyone who knows anything would lie,” Havoc said.

Feury nodded. “And it wouldn’t technically be a lie, anyway.” 

Breda grunted. “It doesn’t matter.”

“At least tell us how you met,” the lady said while Havoc asked, “What do you mean?” Even if Mustang said too much, and even if the Judiciary Corps launched an investigation into their unit, they would have difficulty finding hard evidence that Mustang and Hawkeye had violated the fraternisation codes. Havoc had never prided himself on being the clever one, but even he knew that some lines remained uncrossed.

“You’re very well-connected in society,” the lady continued, “in the government…” 

Breda shrugged. “I’m just saying, even if we all go in and lie our asses off, getting investigated for compromising the chain of command while running for a government position isn’t a great look.” 

“Did this star-crossed love begin at a function—”

“No,” Mustang said. Then, “No, we were children.” 

Breda sat up straight, and Feury said, “I didn’t know Hawkeye was from Central.” 

“She’s not,” Havoc said. It was something they had bonded over during one of their first shifts together. They were both from tiny, Eastern towns, too insignificant to be included on most maps.

Breda shushed him and went to the radio as if by standing closer to the receiver he could see all the way to Central.

“Well,” the general continued, “I didn’t think I was, but you remember how you were at fifteen.” 

Havoc grabbed his crutch and joined Breda and Feury. The general was running his words together, but those subtle signs of inebriation didn’t make Havoc’s head spin. No, what played round and round in his mind were the things he knew. Mustang must have been talking about a fake person, and thousands of gossip columnists would be waiting to descend upon Central and ask every woman who walked the streets if she had ever known or spoken with Roy Mustang in his childhood. There would probably be ten women by the end of the day claiming to be the one Mustang had meant.

He couldn’t have been talking about a real person, because Mustang and Hawkeye had met in Ishval. They had met in Ishval because Mustang had grown up in Central and Hawkeye in the East. So they couldn’t have met as children. Because Mustang and Hawkeye had met in Ishval. They had met in Ishval because Mustang had grown up in Central—

“He can’t be talking about—” Feury managed before Breda shushed him again.

“So this is a childhood romance that broke apart too early,” the woman said, and Havoc felt a surge of dislike, both for her pushing too hard on things she had no business knowing and for her making him question a relationship he had taken for granted for fifteen years.

“No,” Mustang said again, and this time, he had the audacity to laugh, as if it were all some clever joke or radio drama. “What fifteen-year-old boy who believes he’s an adult spends his time chasing an eleven-year-old girl? Who does that?” 

“In my experience,” said the lady, “fifteen-year-old boys are more interested in girls four years their senior, not the other way around.” 

“Exactly,” Mustang said, and he sounded almost relieved.

“And as you grew older, things fell into place?” 

“We actually went our separate ways for a long time,” he said.

At least, Havoc decided, the Judiciary Corps would have no reason to investigate their office. Primarily because Mustang had grown up in Central and Hawkeye in the East, and they couldn’t have met as children.

“I can’t decide if this is genius or idiotic,” Breda murmured. 

The general continued, “We met again as adults. I had been stationed in the East for a year by the time I realised…” He stopped and cleared his throat.

In the silence, Feury whispered, “Do you think he could be lying?” 

“He could be,” Breda said. “But that means that if someone comes forward claiming to be this mystery woman, he has to either ignore it or run with it. Both could turn out badly.” 

“By the time it happened for me,” Mustang finally said, his voice tight, as if he had just realised how much he had disclosed. “And by then, I was already too late.” 

Feury looked between Breda and Havoc. “And we’re sure she’s from the East? She doesn’t sound Eastern.” 

“But that just means,” said Mustang, “that I have more time and energy to devote to this country and her people. I can devote my entire life, everything I have, to the future of this nation.” 

“She’s from Amlingstadt in Burne,” Breda said, his frown deepening like it did when he was putting together an elaborate puzzle for which he had to deduce the missing pieces. “It’s all public record.” 

The interviewer moved on, thanking the listeners and expressing sadness at having to end the “wonderful, intimate look at the man in the general’s uniform.” Next, she would be speaking with the campaign’s Press Secretary, Mr Roth.

Feury laid one hand on the receiver. “Poor Hawkeye,” he said.

Havoc’s gut twisted. Even if Mustang were honest—and Havoc was not convinced either way—that didn’t mean that their team had imagined feelings for years. It didn’t mean that every fleeting relationship wasn’t a cover or consolation for an unconsummated tryst between the general and his adjutant. Even if Mustang professed love for someone else, it didn’t mean Hawkeye wasn’t in love with him. “Poor Hawkeye,” he said.

Breda cracked his neck. “She’s a big girl.” When Havoc and Feury turned to him, he held up his hands. “I’m just saying she’ll be fine.” 

“Based on what?” Havoc asked. He could only imagine how he would feel if he discovered that Mellie had long carried a torch for another man. He wouldn’t feel fine.

Breda shrugged and walked back to his desk. “I just think there are things we don’t know about them. Their personal lives.” He grabbed a box of files and went to the office door. “I think things aren’t as simple as we want them to be.” 

Then, before Havoc could ask him what he meant by that, Breda left.

“Do you think he knows something we don’t?” Feury asked. “Or do you think he’s full of it?” 

Havoc heaved a sigh and adjusted his grip on his crutch. Breda usually knew more about things than he appeared to. He found tiny pieces of information and pulled them together to form a full investigation. It was his speciality. It was why he was leaving.

Havoc went back to his desk and lowered himself into his chair. For the first time in weeks, he wanted a cigarette, but instead, he pulled a toothpick from a drawer in his desk and started to chew it. “I think Hawkeye is having the worst year of her life.” 

* * *

Mustang leaned against the door frame and he fumbled with the key. He had, perhaps, had two celebratory drinks too many, but Charlie had been pleased.

“She was not letting you get away,” he had said, “but you handled it well, and you brought it back to policy. That’s the best you could have done with her. Adding that specificity was a stroke of genius.” 

Roth had been in similar spirits. “Those were tough questions, and your answers were great. Relatable and real and beautiful,” he had said before joking, “Maybe we should switch jobs.” 

So drinks had followed, and after that, the unsteady trek back to his hotel room.

He managed to fit the key into the lock and turn in, and then he pushed forward and stumbled into the dark room.

His head already pounded as the liquor wore off, and he thought he should order something to the room. Perhaps some of those little sandwiches, or, if the kitchen served such base things, small potato pancakes and some sort of sausage and pickled cabbage. His aunt had her cures for daytime hangovers besides greasy foods, but he would not drink a glass of pickle juice and raw egg yolks if he could help it.

As he steadied himself and closed the door, the lamp in the far corner switched on, and a low, quiet voice asked, “Satisfied?” 

He jumped and fell hard against the side of the wardrobe. He sucked in through gritted teeth and pushed himself upright again and rubbed his shoulder. “Fuck.” Then he looked at the person by the lamp, at her crossed arms and unimpressed frown, at her blonde fringe that partially covered one brown eye.

He looked at the bed and the pristine, white quilt. He looked at the wardrobe and the small, empty vanity. He looked back at her. “Is this the wrong room?” 

Hawkeye lifted her chin. “No.” 

He lifted a heavy finger and shook it at her. “You…” He was a fan of ambush, though he was less inclined to enjoy it when he was on the receiving end. Still, he could not accuse her of stealing his tactics. He preferred to trap his prey and move it to a secondary location, to disorient his target until he could force them to see his side. This, however…This waiting in the shadows, still and silent, for the prey to be in the line of sight…That was Hawkeye’s speciality. “Sniper,” he finished.

She rose from where she had been perched on a bedside table. “You’re drunk. Still.” 

He looked at his door and back at her. “How did you get in here?” 

She walked closer to him and looked up into his eyes. “You were drunk on the air.” 

He held up a finger. “I wasn’t drunk.” 

She threw her hands out. “I heard you! Do you really think—” 

He stepped back. He wanted to lie down, drink water, nap. He wanted to do anything other than sit through the lecture she had prepared. “I had one drink before—” 

“Oh,” she said, and she put her hands on her hips and nodded. “Are you sure it was just the one?” She took a deep breath. “Does Charlie know?” 

Mustang hummed and walked around her to shed his jacket and toss it on a chair. Charlie knew about the post-interview drinks but not the one—no, it had been two—before and during the interview. “No,” he said. “And you’re not going to tell him.” 

She whipped around.

“That’s an order,” he said before she could speak.

She pressed her lips together and furrowed her brow.

Mustang tugged at his collar. He was too warm, his clothes too stuffy. He undid his top two buttons and pushed his sleeves up his forearms. Then he dropped into the chair and on top of his jacket. He looked back up at his adjutant. “What?” 

“I’m trying,” she said, her voice low and tight, “to decide if I protect you by obeying.” 

“Even if—” he raked his hands through his hair. She could be so damn stubborn. He hadn’t embarrassed himself, and he hadn’t released sensitive military information. He had done nothing, as far as he was aware, to warrant such a haranguing. “Charlie and Roth were quite pleased. Why are you upset?” He ticked off his points on his fingers. “I brought things back to policy, I was strong, well-spoken, personable—” 

“What about the last question?” she asked.

He let his head drop and sighed. That was the least concerning part, in his opinion. “The best lies are closest to the truth.” And what a lie it was: he had grown up in Central, and they had met as children. All true, all false.

Hawkeye moved forward and leaned over him. “That doesn’t mean you tell the actual truth!” 

Mustang looked up at her. “Charlie says that specificity adds validity.” 

She leaned back and whispered, “Validity?” She pressed her hand to her mouth and looked out the window, to where the late afternoon sun cast a deep orange glow on everything. She looked back at him and said, “Do you not realise what you’ve done?” 

He sighed because he knew. He had taken care of that little “marriage problem” his team had given him weeks before. He had presented humanity in a different way. “I’ve boosted my poll numbers and pushed my campaign team off my back all at once.” 

“You’ve made me a liability,” she said. “How am I supposed to watch your back if I’m the very thing putting you in danger?” 

He grunted, stood, and pushed past her to the wardrobe. He yanked open the doors and decided he would change into something less formal and constraining for dinner. And, since Hawkeye followed him with that same glare, he had a feeling she would decline to join him.

“If people ask the right questions,” she continued. “They’ll find everything. My father’s research, the years we’ve spent…” 

He yanked off his dress shirt and hung it on the rod, and she averted her gaze and licked her lips. His chest flushed with warmth, and he wanted to ask if she liked what she saw, him standing there in his vest and trousers and years of military physical demands showing in his musculature.

“Everything we’ve built falls apart,” she said before he could speak. She looked back at him then, her eyes hard. “And it won’t matter what the truth is, then. Just what people believe.” 

He grabbed another shirt and a pair of dark trousers, and then he sat on the bed so he had more stability while he shucked the rest of his uniform, one leg at a time. Even when he had stripped down to his pants and socks, she made no attempt to leave.

Instead, she watched him with little obvious embarrassment and said, “You’ve made me the thing that could destroy you.” 

He snorted as he pulled on a shirt and began doing up the buttons. “That won’t happen.” 

“Oh,” she said, and she cupped her elbows and leaned one hip against an iron bedpost. “Because no one’s ever held me over your head before?” 

He paused on the last button. There had been that time, eight years earlier, when Führer Bradley had taken Hawkeye, had dangled her in front of Mustang’s eyes while she worked under Bradley as a hostage. Of course, he reasoned as he pulled on his trousers, that particular move had been a bit of a gamble on Bradley’s part, and it hadn’t worked anyway.

People might make wild accusations. They might suspect anyone in Central if they took all of his words at face value. Even if someone were to learn that he had spent time in the East as a youth, there were too many towns and too many people to sort through before they would find her. He pulled his braces over his shoulders and buttoned them to his trousers. “You were hardly the only girl in Amlingstadt.” There had been many, and all of them had been ready to fall for the newly arrived city boy, and that had suited him just fine.

“No,” she agreed, “but how many of the other girls have you spoken with in the past twenty years?” Then she let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “Did you give Caroline a call while I wasn’t looking?” 

He scrunched his nose and narrowed his eyes. The name sounded familiar, and there may have been a girl named Caroline, but he couldn’t recall what she looked like.

“Or Rachel,” Hawkeye continued, and his temperature rose. “Or Ana. Or—” 

“I don’t know who they are!” he said as he pushed himself upright and stood over her.

Hawkeye would not be cowed by his anger. “That’s my point!” 

He scrubbed at his face with both hands. She was so much better at arguing sober than he was at arguing drunk. Still, he couldn’t imagine anyone would know to look for him in a town that didn’t even show up on a map. None of that mattered anyway. “How could someone trace it?” he said, and he threw his arms out and leaned in closer. “There are no documents linking me to that goddamn town. Your father and I never even signed a fucking contract because he didn’t trust paper, which you should know better than anyone—” 

His head snapped to the side, and his cheek smarted before he knew what had happened. 

When he did, he felt as if he had been tossed into a frozen lake, and he could feel nothing, not his anger and not the sting of her hand, over the unfathomable cold, cold, cold. He couldn’t look at her, not while he was catching his breath and repeating what he had just said in his mind; and, oh, what a horrible thing it had been.

When he did look at her, her eyes were wide, and she cradled her hand against her chest, as if she were afraid of what would happen if she were to release it. ‘“Sir,” she choked, “I’m—” 

“No,” he said, and he stared at her hands, only at her hands. He couldn’t bear meeting her gaze. “No, that was a terrible thing to say.” 

She nodded once. “It was.” Then she shook her head. “I still shouldn’t—” 

“Don’t,” he said, and he sat on the edge of the bed again. “This is why I hired you.” In truth, he had told her to shoot him if he ever strayed too far from his ideals. What manner of man was he if he couldn’t withstand a slap when he was out of line?

She lowered herself to sit next to him and clasped her hands in her lap.

They stayed that way for a time, side by side and staring at the pattern in the wallpaper and letting the silence fill the space between them.

His thumb twitched, pain shot through his wrist, and his fingers seized. He knew she had noticed, he saw it in the way she turned her head away just so and clasped her hands tighter, but she did not reach for him. She did not reach for him when he began to massage his hand, working from the palm to the tips of his fingers and back, and she did not reach for him when the spasms had passed.

“There are no documents,” he said. “It’s untraceable. Everyone around us who could testify would lie, and there’s nothing to lie about. We haven’t broken the rules.” 

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and pressed her lips into a thin line. They were constantly breaking the rules. They were breaking them at that moment.

“There’s nothing definitive,” he clarified. “We’ve never broken the chain of command. Or appeared to,” he added when she opened her mouth to contradict him. “There are no documents, no witnesses, no proof, so…” He took a deep breath. “No violations.” She still wore a puzzled frown, so he scrambled for something distracting. “How did you get in here?” 

“I picked the lock,” she said as if it were obvious. “Havoc taught me.” 

He closed his eyes and tried to remember Havoc’s teaching her anything, and he asked, “Where was I?” 

“Sleeping, I think.”

He opened his eyes and nodded. That sounded right.

“We shouldn’t be alone together,” she said, and the words slammed into his chest and squeezed his heart. “Not even for a few minutes,” she continued. “Not unless we’re in uniform, and even then…” She looked down at her hands and then up at him. “There’s too much risk.” 

He looked down at the toes of his socks. She was right, of course. They hadn’t set parameters the first time, and that had allowed affection to overwhelm them again and again. They needed a clear delineation, and that was it. But how the weight of it crushed him! He thought his chest might collapse inward, for he had learned to breathe and live lifetimes in those quiet moments of professional solitude.

He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at her, at the way her fringe fell over her forehead, at the way her jawline softened as it turned toward her ear. Part of him—the part that was more inebriated than was advisable—wanted to ask her for one night. Just one night to hold her and be as close to her as he possibly could, and then he could walk away in the morning and be satisfied for the rest of his life.

Instead, he said, “You’re right.”

“You have to stop drinking during the day,” she said. “Even if this was calculated—and I’m not convinced it was—you could slip. Or…” She trailed off and gave him the tiniest of smiles. “It’s a bad look, politically.” 

“I know,” he said, and he meant it. He had been reckless, accepting a drink before he was supposed to be on the air, and he decided he would never do so again. He couldn’t risk the campaign like that.

Her fingers were still laced together so tightly that her knuckles were white, so he said, “I’ll ask Breda to double-check that there are no documents.” There hadn’t been, and he was certain of it. He had never signed an apprenticeship contract with Berthold Hawkeye, and if his aunt had done so for him, she would have told him.

Hawkeye nodded and said, “You’ll have to tell him everything.” 

Mustang shrugged. “So that makes…four people who’ll know.” At least, four people would know their shared history when Grumman was having a good day.

She did not relax.

“Who else?” he asked.

“Rebecca knows enough that she’ll piece it together,” she said as she stared down at her hands. “And Edward.” 

Mustang inhaled sharply through his nose and nodded. He knew Hawkeye had divulged certain secrets eight years ago to Edward, but he had never known how much she had revealed. Still, if he knew Edward, and he did, the boy would never repeat them, not even to his own brother.

“You probably haven’t heard,” he said. “Alphonse Elric passed his exam.” 

She looked up. “I didn’t take him.” 

“I know,” Mustang said. “The Führer did.”

“The Führer,” she repeated.

He nodded. It still irked him that, after all his attempts to call and visit the Führer, Grumman’s first act on a lucid day was setting up a game that involved Alphonse Elric and was in direct conflict with Mustang’s own ends. “So I was thinking we go as soon as possible and figure out what he’s up to.” 

“We,” she said.

“Who else?” He watched her ponder. Each of her experiences in the Führer’s residence had been its own nightmare, and he understood that, but he needed to know. She would go, and if not for Alphonse’s sake, then for his. “Even into hell, right?” 

She gave him another tight smile and nodded.

They stayed there, sitting on the edge of the bed in a silence that weighed heavy on him, until she was sure most guests were in their rooms preparing for dinner and no staff was in the hall. Then she slipped out of his room and into hers unnoticed.


	15. Chapter 15

David hated Central. He hated the overcrowded train station, the absurd prices of the cabs, the general attitude of the city. East City was one of those special big cities with the charm of a small town, with lovely little buildings and canals that nestled together like some unplanned masterpiece of a puzzle. Central sprawled.

But Mariya had wanted to arrive early. “It is for practice,” she had said. “I need to know how my voice carries in venue.”

He hadn’t meant to travel with her, for his conference would not be for another week, but Mariya had somehow convinced him that the trip would be fun. So he had asked another professor to take over his classes for just one more week, and he had chosen to join Mariya on the early morning train. Even that had been unenjoyable, because Mariya had suggested they play cards, and she excelled at bluffing.

He looked around the hotel lobby while Mariya waited on a low settee. She had been right: the theatre and government had paid for a much finer hotel than the one he would have stayed in alone. 

“Mr Bauer, correct?” asked the concierge.

“Yes,” he said as he stared at the chandelier and wondered how many individual crystals surrounded the electric lights.

The lift to his right opened, and he glanced over out of curiosity and felt all air leave his lungs.

It was her. The friend. Riza’s friend. The one whose telephone number he had actually been after. The one he had considered flirting with the night after he and Ellen had been fighting because he had made the decision to tell her that he did, in fact, have a wife, but that it was alright, and his wife knew about the relationship, and they would be getting divorced eventually—And he needed to stop telling the girls he dated that he was married. It never ended well for him. Of course, that had been before he had realised Riza’s friend was married, and he didn’t mess around with married women. He understood the irony of it.

And she certainly was married, and the man next to her was probably her husband, and they were probably having problems because they didn’t look at one another, but they did have a short and aggravated exchange before the man leaned in and kissed her cheek and—It wasn’t his business.

It wasn’t his business.

He turned around again and steadied his breathing because she was definitely married and it wasn’t his business.

“Your key, Sir,” the concierge said to him as he slid a key and a card with the room number across the counter. “And have a lovely day.”

David doubted he would but he thanked the concierge anyway and left the check-in counter.

“Riza!” the pretty friend called, and he looked up so quickly he felt dizzy.

But there they were, both in full uniform, General Mustang and his aide emerging from the lift. They stopped and spoke to the dark-haired woman for a moment and then left through the lobby doors, perhaps off to make more populist remarks on the radio.

His heart hammered against his ribs as he made his way across the lobby to where Mariya waited.

“We’re staying in a different hotel,” he said.

Mariya looked up at him through her eyelashes. “And you are paying for new hotel?”

“If I have to,” he said as a bellboy approached and picked up their cases. “Leave those.”

“Don’t listen,” Mariya said to the boy. “Take them.”

“Masha,” he said. Singing for one night was one thing, but keeping up their charade under the noses of the military for the entirety of their stay was quite another. “Mustang is here.”

“Please,” she said to the bellboy, who scurried away with both cases. “You will live,” she said.

David inhaled and grabbed her shoulders. He was becoming increasingly less convinced that they would live past the end of their trip. One of them, Mustang or Riza or her friend or someone, would notice that their marriage was not what it seemed. Their future would be bleak, at best. “Masha,” he said again.

She shook him off and went to the lift. “I am hungry.” She turned and looked at him. “Coming?”

He shook his head. It had been a bad idea from the beginning, and he had known it. Still, he followed her and, as the lift operator turned the crank, said, “I hate this city.”

* * *

Edward ran the spoon under the tap for the third time and hoped Winry would be back soon. If Yuriy threw his spoon one more time, Edward was going to start screaming too.

“No!” Yuriy cried as Edward came back.

Edward grabbed a mushy carrot off the plate—perhaps he had overcooked them, but that was no reason for hysterics—and popped it into his mouth. “See?” he said. “Yummy. Please, just try—”

Yuriy grabbed a handful of the carrots and hurled them on the floor. “No!” he screamed again. It was a new favourite word.

Edward mashed his fingertips into his eyes. “What do you want? Do you want peas? Apples?” He leaned in. “Just tell me what you want.”

“No!”

Edward ran to the electric refrigerator and grabbed a basket of strawberries. Yuriy loved strawberries. But when he held one out, his son grabbed it and threw it across the room with another emphatic “No!”

It was, he decided, one of the worst weeks of his life. First, he had learned that his brother had taken the State Alchemist exam—and he had learned it from Mustang, no less! Then, Yuriy had discovered the concept of free will, but he seemed interested in exercising that knowledge only while Winry was busy examining the aeroplane engine in their yard. And to top it all off, Mustang had given that interview, the one that kept Edward tossing and turning at night.

“He’s not talking about—” Winry had said.

“She’s from the East,” Edward had been quick to say before shoving a sandwich into his mouth. Riza had trusted Edward, and if Mustang was determined to be a moron, that meant it was Edward’s job to protect her secrets. Even if that meant lying to his wife. Still, Winry would understand that sort of lie. 

Yuriy snatched the spoon off the table and threw it as Winry, covered in black grease, walked through the back door and into the kitchen. 

The spoon clattered at her feet, and she looked between it and Edward before asking, “What’s happening?”

Edward threw his hands in the air. “I’m trying to feed your son!”

Yuriy wailed and slung another handful of carrots, and Winry rushed to the table. “Has he eaten anything?”

Edward stood and backed away. “He’s eaten maybe two bites?”

“Alright,” Winry said as she tried to catch flailing limbs. “Do you want to nap now or after you eat?”

Yuriy screamed and kicked his little legs as fast as they would go.

Edward turned toward the window that looked out to the main road and grabbed the back of his neck. By some miracle, Trisha had not woken up from her own nap. 

A nap sounded perfect at that moment, and if he and Winry could manage to talk Yuriy down, he would suggest they go upstairs and drop face-first onto their bed until one of the kids screamed them awake again—

Then he saw them. Two figures walked up the path to the house, and Edward felt his temperature rise.

“No way,” he said.

Winry wrestled with Yuriy and said, “What?”

“He’s back.” No telephone call, no warning. True, Alphonse had learned from Edward how to be as uncommunicative as possible, but there was no excuse for doing something idiotic, never telling one’s family, and walking home as if nothing were wrong. Edward knew because he had tried to do the same hundreds of times in his youth.

“Ed,” Winry said over Yuriy’s continued screams. “Don’t kill him.”

“No, I’m gonna kill him,” he said, and he stormed into the front room, onto the porch, and down the steps.

Alphonse dared to smile while Edward marched toward him, and that only made Edward tense his shoulders more.

“Ed,” Alphonse said. “We just—”

Edward shoved him hard, and a leather suitcase hit the ground. Garments scattered in the dirt while Mei shouted something in Xingese.

“Hey!” Alphonse cried. He jumped back to his feet and hunched forward. “Ow! I will destroy you!”

Edward didn’t care that Alphonse was the better fighter. He shoved him again. “I had to find out from Mustang, you dumbass!”

Alphonse stepped back before Edward could push him again. “Well, it’s not my fault he told you!”

Edward stopped and puffed out his cheeks. “What?” He shook his head. “That’s not the—” He wouldn’t let Alphonse derail the conversation. He gestured between them. “We talked about this! Years ago!”

“Yeah,” Alphonse said. “Years!” He held out his hands. “So much has changed, and I—”

“You went along with this?” Edward said as he rounded on Mei.

She put her hands on her hips and spread her feet. “I did. So what?”

“Don’t yell at her,” Alphonse began, but Mei continued.

“He did it for you!”

Edward felt as if the air had been knocked out of his chest, and he looked at Alphonse again. “I can’t—I trusted you with something—”

“It was your idea first!” Alphonse said.

Edward tugged at his hair. “For me!” He reached forward again and Alphonse—finally—retaliated by slapping Edward’s hand away. “And what do you do? ‘Oh, I think I’ll just pop by the Führer’s office and join the military—‘“

Alphonse caught Edward’s next strike and pushed him back. “It’s a different military now, Ed!”

“It’s a military!” Edward said. He lunged forward and grabbed Alphonse’s shoulders and tried to pull him forward. “A military is a military!” Alphonse grappled with Edward’s wrists as Edward added, “Do you realise what Izumi is going to do when she—”

“Alright, stop it!” cried Winry, who, somehow still wrestling Yuriy, pried them apart.

Edward stepped back, and the two glared at each other, flushed and breathing heavily.

“You want to kill each other?” Winry asked. “Fine. Just—” She stopped when Yuriy squealed with joy and reached out for Mei. Winry, mouth open and brow furrowed, looked from the suddenly delighted child she held and his aunt. “What?” Then she shook her head and, before Mei could say anything about it, shoved Yuriy into her arms. “Never mind. Just stop it!”

Alphonse gestured to Edward and said, “Win—”

“Shut up,” Winry said. She held up her hands while she stood between Edward and his brother. “When Granny died, I became the head of this family. So you’re both going to do what I say.” She pointed to her chest. “And I say we’re going into that house, and we’re going to talk about this like rational adults.”

“See,” Edward said because Alphonse seemed incapable of making any rational decisions, “to do that, we’d all have to actually be rational ad—”

Winry wheeled around. “Really?”

Edward was going to say that this was between him and Alphonse, that they didn’t need a big family conference, but Winry raised her eyebrows. So he huffed and turned back toward the house. He and Alphonse could always fight it out their way later.

As they neared the house, he could see the aeroplane and the square where Winry had pulled away the siding.

“What happened to the aeroplane?” Alphonse asked, his every word grating on Edward’s nerves.

“Relax,” Winry said. “I put everything back where I found it.”

“You know,” Edward said as he looked behind him, “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything—”

“Well, it’s not like you tell me everything,” Alphonse snapped back, as if Edward had something to feel guilty for keeping to himself.

Edward stopped and turned. “What does that—”

“House!” Winry said as she pointed toward the door, then she pushed past Edward with Mei and Yuriy close behind.

Alphonse shrugged but kept his frown in place. Edward shook his head and rolled his eyes, and he followed his wife.

“Where is Izumi?” Alphonse asked as he caught up to Edward.

Edward considered not telling him. If Alphonse thought he was keeping secrets, then maybe he would. But in the end he said, “We got a postcard a few days ago from some giant canyon in Elcana.”

Alphonse nodded. “That’s far.”

“Yeah,” Edward said. It was a two-week trip by steam ship, which meant that even if Izumi learned of what Alphonse had done, it would be some time before she could reappear and end both of their lives. “Good thing, too.”

Mei looked back at them while Yuriy played with a silk knot on her dress. “I can’t believe they’re so calm now,” she said to Winry as they climbed the steps to the front door. “When my siblings fight, one of them ends up poisoned or stabbed.”

When they reached the door, Winry held Edward back while Alphonse and Mei went inside. Edward’s earlier weariness came rushing back as he waited for her to speak.

“You know him,” she said when the door closed. “The more you yell at him the more he’s going to fight back.”

He scoffed. It was ridiculous that she thought she could lecture him about his own brother.

“He’s just trying to help,” she said. Then, “We needed a solution.”

“You can’t—” Edward shook his head to clear the sudden ringing in his ears. It was ridiculous that she would try telling him how to handle Alphonse, but it was unbelievable that she would support his ridiculous decision. “Mustang and I agree on this!”

Winry raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And,” he said, because it was obvious, “if we agree on something, it’s most likely objectively correct.”

Winry blinked at him for a long moment. Then she shook her head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Go inside.”

* * *

Mustang considered himself a man of strategy, one who could consider the implications of different moves and the implications of choosing to place pieces with intention. He could weigh his options and come up with the better solution. He excelled at it.

But when he pulled his finger off his knight, it was with a deep uncertainty. It wasn’t the wisest play.

“You could have made another move, there,” Grumman said in that light, airy way that told Mustang he had just lost.

He cleared his throat. He knew there had been another move. He had seen it. “You would have taken my queen.” Of course, he wasn’t sure Grumman would have taken the bait. It would have opened up a path to his king, and the Führer was a better player than that. But there was a chance that Grumman would have come up with another strategy to get himself out of trouble.

Grumman chuckled and moved his own queen across the board. “Always so withholding.”

Mustang moved his bishop and took Grumman’s queen and smiled. “Well, she’s the most powerful piece on the board.”

Grumman smiled back.

Mustang looked back at the board and—No. He rubbed the back of his neck because Grumman had just done what Mustang should have done, and he should have moved his rook instead, and he should have moved his queen—

Grumman knocked Mustang’s knight out of the way. “Oh, ho!” He folded his hands on his knee. “Checkmate.” Then he pointed to a small section on the board. “See, if you had just sacrificed her, you would have had me.”

Mustang doubted that very much. He was even more certain that he had ensured his loss much earlier in the game, but he said, “I’m rusty.”

“I see,” Grumman said. Then, “Shall we play again?”

“I’ll set it up,” Mustang said, and he arranged the white and black pieces in their places. It was a fine set, all carved marble with gold banding between the squares and green velvet under the bases of the heavy pieces. These queens would hold no hidden compartments, the board would not be folded or transported. It was solid and permanent and it belonged among the velvet and dark wood furnishings in the Führer’s sitting room.

They began again.

“You know,” Grumman said after a few moves, “I got up a few days ago and decided I needed to buy my Elizabeth a gift for her birthday. I was halfway out of the residence by the time I remembered she’s been gone for more than thirty years!” Then he laughed.

Mustang did not find it funny, so he hummed. He wondered how the Führer could make light of his illness or of the passing of his daughter. He wondered if it were before or after the Führer had escorted Alphonse to the exam, for Mustang had tried for several days thereafter to schedule an appointment before finally getting one almost a full week later than he would have liked. Then he shook his head and realised several more turns had passed and Grumman was closing in on him again.

“And yet,” Grumman said, continuing his tactic of disquieting nonchalance, “even with my wits scattered to the winds, I’ve got a lead on you.” He moved his rook and readjusted his spectacles. “What’s our score now?”

Mustang moved his bishop and watched Grumman take his pawn. “Does it matter?”

Grumman laughed again. “I suppose not. You’ll never catch up before these old bones are in the ground.” In a few more moves, Grumman had cleared both of Mustang’s knights from the table. “You need to think strategically, my boy.”

Mustang shifted in his seat and pondered the board. “Like you do?” For Grumman used strategies in games for which Mustang did not know the rules. “What are you doing with Alphonse Elric?”

Grumman hummed and nodded. “Clever boy. Very skilled.”

Mustang made his decision and pushed his queen into play. “You escorted him into the exam.”

Grumman moved a pawn. “Oh, my boy. I may be losing my mind, but I remember that clearly.”

Mustang put his finger on his rook but did not move it. “Why?”

Grumman let the silence hang as he sat back in his armchair. “Tensions are mounting abroad,” he finally said, “there are problems along our Eastern and Northern borders, and we’re hurtling toward a global war.” He smiled in that innocent way of his. “I’m only making sure preparations are in place for when you take office.” He looked down at the board and Mustang’s still finger.

“And nothing else?” Mustang asked.

Grumman smiled. “We’re looking to advance some of our strategic capabilities.”

Mustang pulled his hand back and laced his fingers between his knees. “Why him?” 

“Well, he was the only one good enough this year, wasn’t he?” Grumman said.

Mustang held the Führer’s gaze. The military still boasted several dozen State Alchemists, any of which could contribute to general “strategic capabilities.” Which meant that Grumman was specifically interested in Alphonse for those advancements.

“I saw what his brother was capable of,” Grumman said, “and I was curious to know if he had the same potential. And my, my.” He shifted, and the afternoon sun glinted off his spectacles. “He does impress.”

Mustang’s chest tightened, and he moved his rook. “Were you watching?”

Grumman made his own move. “Word got back to me, and I knew he could be useful.” He looked up and smiled. “You did too. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

It wasn’t much of a discussion, Mustang thought, with Grumman playing coy and Mustang having to do all of the guesswork. Still Mustang knew him well enough to understand that he would be learning no more details, so they played.

Several moves later, Grumman said, as if he were commenting on the weather, “It’s never too early to start setting up your board.”

“I don’t want him on my board,” Mustang said, and he clenched his jaw because he saw how Grumman had cornered him with just a few pieces. “I don’t want him or his brother anywhere near my board.”

Grumman hummed. “Be wary of sentimentality.” They each made a move, and then he said, “Do you know why I became the Führer eight years ago and not you?”

Mustang rolled his tight shoulders.

“Because I didn’t play the game like you did,” Grumman said, and he took one of Mustang’s pawns with his knight. Mustang pushed his king one square in a hopeless attempt to avoid being checked. “You played with ideals and feelings, you played to achieve some moral principles.” He moved his knight again. 

Mustang saw that there were no further moves he could make. If he moved his king, Grumman’s queen and bishop and rook would be able to take it. If he moved another piece, Grumman’s knight would end him. The game was over. He sat back and let the heaviness of defeat sink into his gut.

Grumman folded his hands on his knee. “I played to win,” he said. “Checkmate.”

Mustang took a deep breath through his nose. He had played for higher morals, and perhaps that had been his downfall. He thought, as he so often did, of that great, black gate that he had been forced to open because he hadn’t been fast enough, strong enough, smart enough, because he had refused to move on and leave Hawkeye to her fate even though she had asked it of him. He thought of those classical alchemical symbols carved in the doors, of salamanders scurrying through the triangle of water and suns encompassing the triangle of fire, or mercury and sulphur and salt, all in an array so similar to yet so beyond his master’s work, the culmination of his entire life. “But in the end,” he said, choosing his words, “those moral principles are all we have.”

Grumman laughed at that. “I know it too well! Here I am, at the end of my days, half-mad and half-dead, and nothing to show for it but the emptiness left by my sins.” He checked his grin and looked at the pair of doors behind the sofa where Mustang sat. “Are you certain she won’t come in?”

Mustang nodded once. He and Hawkeye had already had the conversation, and she had been brief but firm. She would wait outside. “I’m certain.”

Grumman turned to look out one of the large windows while Mustang set up the chess board again—not for a game, only so it would be ready for when Grumman wanted to play again with another aide.

“And power,” Grumman said. He looked at Mustang, who put the black queen in place. “That’s what I have.”

Mustang frowned. It seemed to him that as his time as Führer continued and his condition worsened, Grumman had less and less power.

“Oh, Vogel may run the show every now and then,” Grumman said, waving his hand, “but they all believe I’m doing it, and that makes it mine.”

Mustang set down the last pawn and watched Grumman look out the window and across the skyline of the city. It recalled something Charlie often said, that the truth didn’t matter nearly as much as what people thought the truth was. How strange it was that for the past fifteen years he had devoted himself to moving the country from a puppet government to a new one, which was supposed to be honest and working in the interests of the people, yet still relied on those same principles of artifice and ruthlessness to function.

“What about your lost lady love?” said Grumman with his sly grin. “Surely when you get elected you can eliminate all obstacles in your way.”

Mustang brushed his hands on his trousers, because the legislation packet still sat, untouched, on top of his suitcase. “I wish it were so easy.” He waited for Grumman to say more, hoping he would mention how a Führer could change certain laws and, maybe, return to the often repeated idea of marrying his granddaughter.

Instead, he said, “How tragic,” and reverted his gaze to the window.

Of course, Grumman knew more of family tragedy and lost love than most men. He had lost his wife, then his daughter, and his only granddaughter showed little interest in even speaking with him.

Over the past few days, that same granddaughter had shown little interest in speaking with Mustang as well.

He stood and straightened his uniform jacket. “I should go. I have a meeting later.”

Grumman stood as well.

“Whatever advancements you’re making in ‘strategic capabilities,’” Mustang added, “don’t pull Alphonse Elric into it.”

Grumman only laughed. “My boy, you know as well as I do that the choice, up until he signs his contract, is his. I can’t force him to accept anymore than you can force him to decline.”

Mustang grunted. In their last telephone conversation, Fullmetal had expressed that the two of them were in agreement—Alphonse couldn’t be a State Alchemist. Between himself and Edward, they could talk Alphonse out of it.

“One last thing, my boy,” Grumman said, and he grabbed Mustang’s forearm. “If you want this,” he said as he looked around the sitting room, “you have to play to win. And you have to be prepared to pay whatever the cost may be.”

Mustang clenched his teeth. There were some prices even he would not pay.

Then the Führer chuckled and released him with a jovial pat. “But you know that, of course! You’re an alchemist. Equivalent exchange, and all that, eh?”

“Is that what you would do?” Mustang asked, for even though he understood why Grumman had let him take the fall for the Promised Day, he could not imagine doing the same.

“Of course, I would,” Grumman said. “And I did.” When he looked back at the door, Mustang remembered that when he had shouldered some of that blame, Hawkeye had shouldered it with him. Grumman had let her fall just the same. Then, “Do give her my best.”

“I will, Sir,” Mustang said, though he doubted she would have much to say on the matter.

Hawkeye rose from a bench when he entered the little waiting area.

Mustang swallowed and gestured behind him. “The Führer sends his best.”

She nodded once, her expression careful and placid. “Thank you, Sir.”

Neither of them said anything more as they left the residence, but he watched her as she drove back to the hotel, her hands tense on the wheel and her eyes staring straight through the windscreen.

Part of him wanted to grab her hand at every light, to insist that the silence had gone on long enough, and to demand that she talk to him. She could hit him again if she liked. She could do whatever she wanted as long as the constant stoicism ended.

Another part of him, the more reasonable part, knew that it was temporary. Once they were more used to the distance and the self-imposed rules, things would go back to how they were meant to be. Things would be easy, and there would be far less temptation for either of them. He could resign himself to a lifetime of longing and dissatisfaction, and that would be the end of it. That should be the end of it.

The thought left a sour taste in the back of his throat, and when they pulled up to the hotel and she handed the keys to a valet, he said, “Tell Neumann I’ll be there in a minute. I have a headache.”

“Shall I get you some aspirin, Sir?”

“No,” he said, because what he wanted was a moment alone to let his mood pass. No, what he really wanted was a moment with her to say over and over anything she wanted to hear that might ease the tightness in his chest. “I’ve some in my room. I’ll get it myself.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and she left him to find his scheduler and their guests and make his excuses.

He made his way up the left and into his hotel room, where he collapsed on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned his collar so that he might breathe easier. It wasn’t quite like screaming, but it was good enough. He raked his hands through his hair and then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumbs. All he needed was a moment before he put on the charm and the smile his donors expected to see.

He counted away two minutes. Then two more. Then, in the middle of the fifth minute, the telephone on the bedside table rang. He grabbed the receiver, and a cheery operator said, “Good evening, Sir. I have a telephone call for you from Eastern Headquarters.”

“Put it through,” he said, and he rolled his shoulders while he waited for the lines to connect until he heard a pop. He said, “What?”

Breda’s voice answered, “I have good news and bad news, Sir.”

Mustang sighed. He had told Breda several days ago to make sure that there was nothing linking him to the East before Ishval. He didn’t know which discomfited him more: that Breda hadn’t even questioned the order, or that there was bad newsl. “Give me the bad first.”

“The 1900 census was counted late,” Breda said. “Just in time for a certain name to appear in the East.”

His gut sank. “What’s the good news?”

“I said ‘was.’”

Mustang sighed in relief. Breda had already pulled the records from the shelf then. They only had to hope someone hadn’t already gone snooping through records in the East, though it was unlikely anyone would have thought to look there in the first place.

“I’ll have a chat with our friend in the Central Archives,” Breda continued, “and see if she can…correct this oversight.”

“Good,” Mustang said. He then recalled that the Central copies of Eastern records were destroyed in the Third Library fire. The Elrics’ friend with the eidetic memory would have to produce two identical copies, but that would be implied when Breda asked for the favour. “Is there anything else?”

“I can’t be certain unless you are, Sir.”

Mustang leaned forward and rubbed at the stiffness in his jaw. He had been certain before, but he hadn’t remembered a census from that year. How many more documents existed that could link him to Amlingstadt and, ultimately, to the Hawkeye Estate? “Check the land district office and make sure there are no further discrepancies.”

“Yes, Sir,” Breda said, and Mustang hung up the telephone and put his head in his hands.

She had been right, as usual, and he had been an idiot.

The packet of papers Hawkeye had given him caught his eye. He had taken the Minister to the Führer legislation and tossed it on top of his suitcase. It glared at him, taunting him, so he stood, grabbed it, and threw it into the case where he could forget it.

His thumb twitched, and he grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t bad yet, and it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be helped by a—No. He had decided. There would be no drinks before anything related to the campaign. He couldn’t afford to be careless again.

He flexed his fingers. Neumann was waiting for him with several potential donors, and he had delayed as long as he reasonably could. So Mustang returned to the lobby and went to the doorway of the lounge.

He spied the table immediately, and a server offered to escort him, but before he could accept or decline, a woman in dark green slid from the bar and to his side.

“General Mustang,” she said with a Drachman accent as she extended her hand. There was something familiar about her face, about the sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. Also familiar to him was the rich timbre of her voice. He knew her. He must.

He clasped her hand and smiled. “Hello.”

“I’m Mariya,” she said as they pulled their hands apart. “I—”

“Mariya Ivanovna Orlova Pavluochenko,” he said because he knew why he recognised her. “I know. I saw you in The Courtesan.” The performance had only been a few weeks earlier. She gave him a dazzling smile, and he continued, “You were spectacular.”

“Oh,” she said, and she cast her eyes downward with an expression he knew well. It was the false modesty of one who knew they were better than etiquette would allow them to admit. “Thank you.” She looked up at him again, and he waved the server away. “You always come,” she said. “Always different girl. You never stay.”

Across the dark, smoky room, Neumann raised his hand to signal at him, and Mustang held up a finger. “I’m a busy man,” he said. 

“Not so very busy, I hope,” she said, and he looked back at her. She flashed that smile again. “It would be shame if you miss performances due to election.”

He smiled back because he knew the game she had started. “Is there something I can help you with?”

She opened her mouth, but a man behind Mustang said, “Masha?”

The singer’s smile faltered as David Bauer rounded Mustang to stand beside her. She hissed something to him in Drachman, and he responded.

Mustang had forgotten what he had learned on the train: his housekeeper’s son was married to an opera singer. “I was just speaking with your lovely wife,” he said. They hadn’t been flirting—at least not seriously.

David looked at him and frowned—it was that frown he had inherited from his mother. “Yeah,” he said.

Miss Pavluochenko rolled her eyes and smacked David’s arm with the back of her hand.

She had been about to ask him something. Hawkeye had also asked Breda to investigate David because she had thought his skills would be useful. Mustang had never known David to be verbose, but the couple was in front of him, and he thought it wouldn’t hurt to extend the conversation. So when Neumann waved at him again, Mustang held up his finger once more and said, “I didn’t realise the two of you were in town.” 

“We are,” David said. He turned to Miss Pavluochenko and said something in Drachman, grabbed her elbow, and turned back to Mustang. “Good to see you.” Then he led her back to the bar.

He watched them bicker in whispers as they walked away. He took a deep breath and shook his head before approaching Neumann, who looked quite frantic, at a table with three other men.

“Gentlemen,” Mustang said.

“General Mustang” Neumann said as all the men rose to their feet. His head almost hit the glass pendant light above the table, and he hunched over while he made the introductions and Mustang shook each guest’s hand. “This is Mr Howe, Mr Dunst, and Mr Tritten”

They were all businessmen of some sort, factory owners and men whose fortunes grew with every modern advancement and population burst. Mustang smiled. “Wonderful to finally meet all of you.”

“You too, Sir,” said Mr Howe.

When they had all sat down, Neumann gestured to a server and said, “Anyone care for a drink?”

Mustang had decided to abstain, but it was the sort of thing one did during meetings and negotiations such as these. So, when the other men assented, he did as well. It would only be one.

* * *

Geneva Menke kicked off her heels and turned the knob while she slowly closed the door, careful to not wake Myrtle, who would be taking her exam in the morning. When she stepped into the darkened apartment, though, she noticed a sliver of light on the floor and the low murmur of the radio in the kitchen.

She tiptoed across the room and pushed open the kitchen door.

Myrtle had strewn her books and papers across the tiny table, and she was dressed for bed, her hair already pinned and tied under her silk turban and her yellow dressing gown bright against her dark skin. But she was not reading nor preparing to leave for the bedroom. Instead she leaned forward with her fingers steepled against her lips while she listened to the late-night radio commentators.

“We have been following _The Central Times_ and others as, over the past week, their reporters have been investigating,” said one commentator. “And tonight, we’re going to summarise all of that for you and try to work out who this mystery woman is and, more importantly, who General Roy Mustang is.”__

_ __ _

_ __ _

Geneva stepped into the kitchen and leaned against the doorframe. It was no wonder that Myrtle was listening—she was Richard Kaufman’s daughter, after all. No one had mentioned any other candidate since General Mustang’s radio interview, not in papers and not on the radio. Myrtle might not agree with her father on everything, but the fact that another candidate had so easily eclipsed him in the media had her anxious.

“You’re still up,” Geneva said.

Myrtle jumped, reached forward and switched the power dial on the radio. Then she turned with a radiant smile. “Just taking a break from some last-minute cramming.”

Geneva nodded and joined her at the little table.

Myrtle busied herself with looking over her notes and pretended as if the radio weren’t there. She had been acting the same way ever since the interview, as if by calling attention to it she would cause Geneva’s disappointment to bubble over into something explosive.

Of course, the news surrounded Geneva anyway. Everyone wanted to be the first to uncover the mystery lady’s identity, every newspaper owner wanted it on their front page. Other reporters asked her about it at work. Robert had made it clear that she was to discover who this woman was, and to “leave behind that affair with his aide business.” So it didn’t matter how careful Myrtle was. If Geneva’s disappointment were to escalate into anger or depression, it would have already.

She took a deep, painful breath. Even in those first few days, she had been so certain that she was right, that, somehow, he had lied. But the public records she had managed to find revealed that he had been telling the truth: he had been born and raised in Central, and his aide had been born and raised in the East. Still, some part of her clung to a hope that he had attended a boarding school or something—anything that would place him in the East in 1900, when he would have been fifteen. Then someone else had uncovered his primary school records, and then his lower and upper secondary school records. The conversation had shifted then. Not only was he a handsome, tragic romantic with a long-lost and possibly forbidden love from childhood, but he was also some sort of prodigy, who had begun his education in a state school in a district known for poverty, overpopulation, and prostitution, and had graduated from a private institution on a full scholarship. What was more, he had completed upper secondary a full three years early.

It was the sort of melodramatic life story that one usually found only in novels or radio dramas. The genius child of the gutter rises high above his birth, attains alchemical and class notoriety, rebuilds a backwater and struggling region, and becomes the leader of a nation. It was a proper narrative.

So of course the gossip reporters in Central were combing through class rosters, determining which girls had been entering the secondary school as he had been leaving, making telephone calls and scheduling interviews with anyone who claimed to have known him. Geneva herself had received five telephone calls that week: three from girls who couldn’t give her more information than was publicly available, and two from the same girl with a thick Eastern accent who swore Roy Mustang had lived in her town for two years and so had obviously been lying. 

She had to give credit where it was due. He had clearly wanted to dominate the news cycle, he had succeeded, and there was no end in sight.

She looked at Myrtle, who flipped through a stack of coloured notecards. “I have a second assignment,” she said. A second one, in addition to answering the same questions about Roy Mustang.

Myrtle looked up and smiled. “That’s good.”

Geneva nodded. “Johanna Müller.”

“Right,” Myrtle said, because she knew several Central socialites. “Hasn’t she been seen with Paul Engel?”

Geneva sighed. It was ridiculous that she was writing about two new money so-and-so’s going on dates, as if that were as newsworthy as an election or international relations. But writing about such absurdity was the price of admission into the world of journalism, or so everyone claimed. “Yes, but we got a tip today that they might be second cousins or something.” And that meant she had the duty of investigating and either proving or disproving the rumours.

Myrtle set her cards on the table. “That’s convenient.”

Geneva furrowed her brow.

“My mom called today,” Myrtle explained. “She and my dad want us to come and visit.”

Geneva pressed her lips together for a moment, and then said, “Us?”

Myrtle shrugged. “Well, she said ‘bring your friend,’ so…” She leaned forward. “I’ll be finished with the exam, you’ll be able to do some digging on Johanna Müller, your next column won’t be due until next Thursday, and I know my dad will let you use his typewriter…” She reached across the table and grabbed Geneva’s hand. “Genny,” she said, “just call in sick and run away to Central with me.”

Geneva smiled at that. “Alright.”

When they had gathered all of Myrtle’s study materials and were climbing into bed, Geneva pulled her knees to her chest. “Are you going to tell them?”

Myrtle slid below the coverlet, and Geneva laid down beside her. “I want to,” she said, and then she turned on her side and asked, “Is that alright?”

Geneva bit her lip. It was a frightening idea. If Myrtle told her parents about them, then Geneva would have to tell hers. And neither one of them was certain how their parents would react.

Myrtle shifted closer so that their noses brushed. “Maybe time has made my parents less traditional.” Then she smiled. “Who knows? Maybe my dad will even add it to his campaign platform.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all make bad decisions, and so do government leaders. Sometimes people grow from their mistakes and become better people. Sometimes they stamp them out and hope that the Age of Information doesn’t haul those mistakes to the surface and hold them accountable. Of course, once they are discovered, we the populace also either crucify or apologise for those mistakes, whether they result in a change of heart or whether they were buried and ignored. So, for today’s question…Who is a historical figure about whom you think that, yeah, they messed up there, but they were just trying their best? (Note: Alexander Hamilton is a cop-out). Like, me? I’m a huge Wu Zetian apologist. Like, yeah, she most likely murdered her baby and created a secret police and executed everyone who was a threat in mythically brutal ways. But what was the daughter of a woodcutter to do? Do you realise how high the odds were stacked against her? Girl figured out you ain’t safe from The Men until you’re at the top, so off she goes. Also she did so much good shit for China, even her detractors have to stan. (Have been working on my Wu Zetian historical fiction for the past three NaNoWriMo’s. Expect it never)
> 
> Pro hint! I try to update every other week (“try” being the operative word here…). If it’s been two weeks and you don’t see anything, check the comments. If I’m replying that means the chapter is with Beta readers and will be up the following Chinese Saturday, which may be Friday or Saturday for you—I don’t know your life. If I haven’t replied, that means VPNs have been given a good whack by the government and the delay is most likely caused by the fact that I can’t access this website. In that case, try again the very next Chinese Saturday.


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